Method for using supervised model to identify user

ABSTRACT

A first set of records and a second set of records different from the first set of records are obtained. A score that indicates indicating confidence that the first set of records and the second set of records correspond to a same individual is computed. As a result of the score reaching a value relative to a threshold, a device of an individual associated with the second set of records is caused to prompt the individual to confirm control of a first asset identified by first data within the first set of records. A message to a destination associated with the first asset is provided. As a result of a response to the message indicating that the individual is the same individual, an association between the second set of records and the first asset is stored and the device is caused to display details about the first and second sets of records.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/885,526, filed Jan. 31, 2018, entitled “METHOD FOR USING SUPERVISED MODEL TO IDENTIFY USER,” which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/167,916, filed on May 27, 2016, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,886,686, issued on Feb. 6, 2018, entitled “METHOD FOR USING SUPERVISED MODEL TO IDENTIFY USER,” which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/830,686, filed on Aug. 19, 2015, now U.S. Pat. No. 9,355,155, issued on May 31, 2016, entitled “METHOD FOR USING SUPERVISED MODEL TO IDENTIFY USER,” which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, filed on Jul. 1, 2015, entitled “INCREMENTAL LOGIN AND AUTHENTICATION TO USER PORTAL WITHOUT USERNAME/PASSWORD,” the content of which includes Appendix A, which are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety for all purposes. This application also incorporates by reference in its entirety for all purposes the full disclosure of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/830,690, entitled “METHOD FOR USING SUPERVISED MODEL TO CONFIGURE USER INTERFACE PRESENTATION.”

BACKGROUND

In order to make a purchase from an online merchant, a user is often required, or at least prompted, to create an account with the merchant. If the user wishes to view details about previous purchases, such as estimated delivery date, tracking numbers, date, and amount of purchase, and so on, the user is often required to login to the account using a username and password. However, user names and/or passwords may not be top-of-mind information; that is, user names and/or passwords may be difficult to remember, especially if the user has other accounts with other merchants or online services. Moreover, if the user loses or forgets either the username or password to the account, the process for regaining access to the account can be cumbersome. Furthermore, if the user forgets that he/she already has an account with the merchant, the user may end up creating duplicate accounts, but will only be able to access details about purchases associated with the particular account and not details of all purchases from the merchant made by the user. Additionally, if the user makes purchases from multiple merchants, the user must view details of the purchases separately at each of the merchants' website.

As computers and computer networks become ubiquitous, more and more transactions are being conducted over computer networks. Various mechanisms and procedures have been implemented in order to make such transactions secure and in order to verify and authenticate the parties involved. Often, such verification and authentication requires the user to input information that the user may not readily remember, is intrusive, or is not easily accessible to the user. Accordingly, requiring the user to input such information impedes the transaction and adversely affects the user experience, which may cause fewer transactions to be conducted over computer networks.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Various embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure will be described with reference to the drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a user with two assets logging in with one of them in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 2 illustrates an example of an unauthorized entity denied access to an account in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of shared assets in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 4 illustrates an example of a user who has lost access to an asset in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 5 illustrates an example of an invoice web page in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a confirmation message in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart that illustrates an example of asset verification in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a record matching service interacting with other entities in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 9 illustrates an example of matching a user identity to a past user in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of a flow of matching details to identify a customer in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of determination of a user identity by a business rule management system in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 12 illustrates an example of a record matching service in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 13 illustrates an example of a decision tree of a supervised model in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 14 illustrates an example of a supervised model in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 15 illustrates an example of a supervised model dynamically customizing user interfaces in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 16 illustrates an example of a supervised model scoring a prospective payment option in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 17 is a block diagram that illustrates an example of scoring customer identities associated with historical records based on a set of details in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 18 is a flow chart that illustrates an example of determining a user interface based on a prediction of user preference in accordance with an embodiment;

FIG. 19 is a flow chart that illustrates an example of predicting return of an item by a user in accordance with an embodiment; and

FIG. 20 illustrates a computing device that may be used in accordance with at least one embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following description, various embodiments will be described. For purposes of explanation, specific configurations and details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments. However, it will also be apparent to one skilled in the art that the embodiments may be practiced without the specific details. Furthermore, well-known features may be omitted or simplified in order not to obscure the embodiment being described.

Techniques described and suggested include a system and method that receives requests from users to view details associated with a first transaction conducted by the user (e.g., a purchase of items or services from an online merchant via a browser). The request may be in the form of a user logging into a web interface using at least some information that corresponds to a first asset (first asset information) that is provable by the user to be under the control of the user. Examples of such assets may be mobile telephone or an email account, and the asset information corresponding to the asset may be a mobile telephone number or an email address. Information provided by the user at login may include other identifying information, such as a birthdate or a national identity number.

Based on the first asset information provided at login, the system of the present disclosure may be able to match transactions conducted by the user using such first asset information. The system of the present disclosure may also be able to identify other transactions appearing to be, as determined by the system, associated with the same user but being associated with information corresponding to a second asset (second asset information), different than the first asset. The system of the present disclosure may request confirmation that the second asset is also under the control of the user. Upon receiving confirmation from the user, both the first and the second asset information may be associated with a single identity by the system of the present disclosure. Consequently, both assets may be effectively associated with transactions made in conjunction with either asset, and logging in using either the first asset information or second asset information will allow the user to view details about transactions associated with either asset.

Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure improve the field of computing, specifically the field of user authentication and security, by determining user identity and authenticity by confirming assets associated with transactions that are under the current control of the user and avoiding the use of complex passwords that may be insecurely protected or easily forgotten by users. Additionally, techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure improve the efficiency of computing systems by performing secure authentication without the need for managing sets of credentials. Moreover, techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure are necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome problems specifically arising with usability of interfaces by determining an identity of the user only from a minimum amount of top-of-mind information input by the user.

Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure include a system and method for determining an identity of a user based on details corresponding to an order, where the details lack a ground truth value that identifies the user. The techniques described include receiving a request to determine a user identity associated with details of an order, user registration, access information, or the like. The request may include details from which a set of values that correspond to values in fields of a database of historical records can be extracted. In some examples, “historical records,” may refer to a data set in which data similar to the details or the set of values have been previously stored, at least some of the data in the data set having originated from a different source (e.g., one or more different users than the user associated with the user identity) than the current source of the details.

The set of values may be transformed into a normalized set of search terms, and a set of inverse document frequencies (IDFs) corresponding to the set of search terms may be calculated. Examples of transforming values into search terms include converting be values to upper or lower case (e.g., “Lars” into “lars”), concatenating multiple values into a single search term (e.g., “henry” and “gibson” into “henrygibson”), removing leading zeros, padding with leading zeros, removing white space, padding with white space, truncating a value (e.g., “donald” into “don”), removing nonnumeric characters (e.g., “$1,000” becomes “1000”), adding nonnumeric characters (e.g., “127000000001” into “127.000. 000.001”), adding wildcard characters (e.g., “main st*”), and so on. The inverse document frequencies may reflect how common the search term is in the database of historical records. For example, an IDF of a search term that occurs in 10,000 records of the database will be lower than an IDF of a search term that occurs in 100 records of the database. Thus the higher the IDF, the more rare (i.e., uncommon) the term is. Rare terms may be more likely to indicate that a current user is associated with or the same as the user that corresponds to matching records in the database.

Historical records are retrieved based on the search queries. For example, for a given name search term of “henry” and a family name search term of “gibson” may retrieve a set of records containing either given name field values matching “henry,” family name field values matching “gibson,” or both. The retrieved historical values may be ranked according to a ranking scheme, which may be based on frequencies of matched values, and a subset of top ranking historical records may be selected and evaluated through a specially trained supervised model called a random forest. The supervised model may output, for each of the top ranking historical records, a confidence score, which may be based on votes cast by decision trees in the random forest. A business rule management system may then determine, based on a set of rules and the confidence scores, whether the user is the same as a user associated with some or any of the top scoring historical records.

Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure further include receiving a set of field values that corresponds to a transaction. The set of field values may include the values input by a user into form fields of the website of an online merchant. The set of field values may also include one or more other details about the transaction, including an Internet protocol address of one or more computing devices involved in the transaction, time, and/or date. Based on the set of field values, identifying information for the user that is a party to the transaction may be obtained, such as the user's identity (which may be determined according to techniques described above), the user's age, the user's email address, the user's phone number, and so on. Information about previous transactions may also be obtained based on the user's determined identity, such as information about one or more previous purchases by the user.

A characteristic associated with the customer, such as a credit risk (e.g., likelihood of default by the user), may be calculated, and, based on this characteristic, previous transaction information, and the identifying information, a set of inputs may be generated. For each possible payment type potentially available for the user, the set of inputs may be passed to a random forest of the supervised model to obtain a score indicating a likelihood that the user will prefer to pay for the transaction using that particular payment type. The random forest in this embodiment is a random forest that was trained on a data set of previous purchases of various users, with the records of the data set having one or more ground truth values, at least one of which being the payment type selected for the particular purchase by the particular user.

Based on the scores for each of the potential payment types, the system may select the user interface customized around the payment type most likely preferred by the user. For example, if previous purchases indicate that payment type for purchases made between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM is usually direct bank withdrawal, but outside those hours payment type is usually by credit card, if the transaction is occurring at 10:53 PM, the system may select to display credit card as the default payment type in the checkout user interface. Upon selection of the payment option by the user the system may perform the particular workflow associated with that payment type.

Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure further include techniques for determining an ideal balance between credit pricing and customer conversion. In other words, determining an ideal reduction in the cost of credit in order to encourage more users to finalize transactions, thereby allowing a creditor to maintain profitability through increased volume. Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure further include techniques for using a random forest of the supervised model to determine a likelihood, based on details associated with the transaction, that a customer will return one or more items from the transaction. By predicting the likelihood of returns, efficiency can be achieved in merchant systems by, for example, allowing additional information for payment processing (i.e., because some products may be in-transit back to the merchant, and therefore the customer need not be charged in full for the order) and providing the merchant with a more dynamic inventory (e.g., the merchant may not need to restock some items if returns of some items are expected).

Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure further include predicting, using a random forest of the supervised model, future purchasing behavior of users based on browsing habits. For example, if a user browses product pages for 32-inch televisions of one or more merchants, the system of the present disclosure may conclude that the user is on the verge of purchasing a 32-inch television, and, accordingly, may present promotions or price reductions for 32-inch televisions. Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure further include predicting a likelihood, using a random forest of a supervised model, that a user will not complete a transaction, and, accordingly, may present promotions or other incentives in order to encourage such users to complete their transactions. Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure further include utilizing a 3-D Secure security layer for credit card transactions based on a predicted likelihood, as determined by a random forest of the supervised model, that a user will not complete a transaction.

Techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure improve the field of computing, specifically the field of user authentication, by determining an identity of the user without requiring credentials such as username and password. Additionally, techniques described and suggested in the present disclosure improve the efficiency of user authentication in computer systems by utilizing a random forest, trained using population data having ground truth values for user identities, to be able to determine the user identity and compute a confidence score within a threshold amount of time (e.g., 50 milliseconds). Moreover, described and suggested techniques discussed herein are necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome problems specifically arising with ease-of-use of computing devices for conducting transactions between parties over a computer network by verifying one or more identities of the parties to the transaction using top-of-mind information and/or details intrinsic to the transaction itself. For example, online payment systems generally use computer-implemented techniques for authentication, thereby allowing such online payment systems to perform automated processing of payments while ensuring with high probability that payments are authorized by a proper party (i.e., one with authorization to utilize a payment instrument). Techniques described and suggested herein allow for such online payment systems to operate more efficiently and in a manner that addresses many of the cumbersome aspects of conventional authentication techniques, thereby making such online payment systems easier to use. Further, many organizations employ complex systems to customize user interfaces, such as web pages. Techniques described and suggested herein allow for more efficient and/or more effective customization of such user interfaces, including user interfaces for online payment systems.

FIG. 1 illustrates a scenario 100 of an embodiment of the present disclosure.

Specifically, FIG. 1 depicts a user 102 who is conducting a first transaction 108A using first asset information 106A linked to an identity 110 of the user 102 that is associated with a user account 112, and a second transaction 108B associated with second asset information 106B also linked to the identity 110. In an example of an application of the present disclosure, the user 102 may visit an online merchant to make a purchase of one or more products offered for sale by the online merchant. The purchasing process may involve collecting information input by the user 102 (e.g., user name, email address, telephone number, country, billing address, delivery address, etc.) and information intrinsic to the first transaction 108A itself (e.g., item type, item price, item quantity, payment method, etc.). Additional information related to the first transaction 108A may also be collected, such as Internet protocol address of the device that the user is using to conduct the purchase, current date, and current time. In embodiments of the present disclosure, when a transaction is finalized, this information may be tied to the first transaction 108A (e.g., stored in a data store in association with the first transaction 108A). When a user seeks to log in to view details (e.g., an invoice, tracking information, total price, payment method, etc.) of the first transaction 108A later, the system may prompt the user 102 authenticate him/herself by inputting identifying information corresponding to an asset of the user, such as a telephone number or an email address that was input at the time of the first transaction 108A, and/or other identifying information (such as a birthdate or national identity number). The identifying information is intended to confirm that the user 102 seeking to view details about the first transaction 108A is actually the same user as the user who conducted the first transaction 108A. Such identifying information may include information corresponding to an asset of the user (also referred to as asset information).

In the present disclosure, the term, “asset,” may refer to an item, account, or other tangible or intangible property, having identifying asset information, that can be proven to be under the control of the user 102. For example, an asset may be a telephone, an email account, a residence, a social media account, or other asset. The term, “asset information,” may refer to data assigned to the specific tangible or intangible property (e.g., a device, an account, etc.) under the control of the user 102 that may operate as an address indicating a location to which communications can be transmitted, or some other identifier usable to confirm that the asset is under the control of the user 102. For example, a telephone number may be a unique series of numbers assigned to a device owned by or under the control of the user 102. Likewise, an email address may be a unique string of characters assigned to an email mailbox owned by or under the control of the user 102. Examples of asset information may include information such as a telephone number, an email address, a residential address, a social media uniform resource locator (URL), and an OAuth token.

In the context of the present disclosure, assets may be confirmed, using the asset information, as being under the control of the user. Proving “control” of the asset in this context may involve acknowledging receipt and consumption of communications directed to the asset via the asset information. Confirmation that the user 102 entering the identifying information is the same user as a user who conducted the first transaction 108A may be obtained through a challenge-response authentication based on the identifying information. For example, a message (e.g., “Reply to this message to confirm,” “Enter the following confirmation code on the website,” etc.) may be sent to a respective telephone number or email address (i.e., asset information), and the user 102 may follow the instructions in the message to confirm that the user 102 has control of the asset. Although the present disclosure frequently refers to telephone numbers and email addresses as asset information, it is contemplated that other information could be used for verification. For example, a residential address could be considered asset information, in which case, a letter containing a confirmation code could be sent to the address by postal mail. Upon receiving and opening the letter, the user could enter the confirmation code into a screen of the merchant to confirm receipt of the letter at the specified address.

Although the present disclosure uses examples of telephone numbers and email addresses as the asset information 106A-06B, it is contemplated as within the scope of the present disclosure that other information owned by or under the control of the user 102 can be considered as an asset in this context. For example, an OAuth access token may also be an asset associated with a transaction. On the other hand, a given name, a family name, or even a combination of given name and a family name may not be considered to be an asset in the context of the present disclosure, because such names cannot be reliably and/or easily verified as belonging to the user 102 attempting to view transaction information. Even a national identification number, such as a Social Security number in the United States, may not be sufficient to act as an asset, because it is not easily provable as being under the control of the user 102, unlike a telephone number or an email address which may be verified as being under the control of the user 102 with little difficulty (e.g., by verifying receipt of a message sent to the respective number or address). Other examples of assets that may be associated with the transaction may include a residence or other building (e.g., verifiable by sending a confirmation code in a letter to a postal address), or a URL of a personal social media Internet page.

The record matching service 104 may be a record matching service for identifying users as users associated with other transactions based on occurrences of key details associated with a current transaction, of the type described within the Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, incorporated herein by reference, which are hereby incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. In this manner, the record matching service 104 is able to match users with their previous purchases without the need for cumbersome login and credential verification processes. For example, when the user 102 is identified by the record matching service 104 as likely to be a same user as a user associated with a second transaction 108B, based on key details associated with the first and second transactions 108A-08B, embodiments of the present disclosure may determine whether to allow the user 102 to view information about the second transaction 108B potentially associated with the user 102 (pending further confirmation).

That is, in order to confirm that the user 102 is not simply trying to impersonate a previous user in order to obtain details about the second transaction 108B, in some embodiments, the system of the present disclosure can prompt the user 102 for proof of ownership or control of the second asset information 106B provided with the second transaction 108B. For example, if the system of the present disclosure determines, based on a first email address provided by the user 102, that the user 102 may also be associated with the second transaction 108B conducted using a second email address the system may send a message to the second email address requesting validation that the current user owns or is in control of the second email address. Upon such confirmation, the system may then link/associate both the first and second email addresses with the identity of the user 102, such that in the future the user 102 can use either address as an asset to view previous transactions associated with either address.

In some embodiments, rather than automatically sending a message to the second email address, the user 102 may be prompted by the merchant website/interface with a message similar to, “Have you used this [alternate email address/telephone number] for a previous transaction? If so, click here to validate,” and, after clicking, a message may be sent to the second email address or telephone number for validation in the manner described above. In some embodiments, portions of the second email address or telephone number may be obfuscated as an additional security precaution. Note that the first and second asset need not be the same type of asset. For example, the user 102 may have used a telephone number as the second asset information 106 and be using an email address for the first asset information 106A, and upon confirmation, in a manner described above, that the first and second asset information 106A-06B are associated with the same user and they may be linked to the same user account.

The system of the present disclosure may be implemented as an automated payment system provided as a service to one or more merchants, such as through a software widget embedded into the merchants' online checkout web pages. One advantage provided by the system of the present disclosure is that the system may be used by multiple merchants, and, in this way, the user account 112 may be linked to transactions at all participating merchants without requiring the user 102 to create/register separate accounts with each merchant.

Another advantage provided by the system of the present disclosure is that separate transactions may be identified as being potentially associated with the same user merely from details of the first transaction 108A, and then the separate transactions may be linked to the same user account upon confirmation that they are indeed associated with the same user. In this way, the system of the present disclosure can avoid the complexity of managing a set of credentials for users, and improve security by avoiding the need for complex password requirements and passwords, which may be insecurely protected or easily forgotten by users. Furthermore, any details input by the user may simply be top-of-mind information (e.g., email address, telephone number, etc.) or information already associated with the transaction (e.g., items selected for purchase, payment method, etc.), thereby improving usability of the interface for the user.

In some implementations, proving access to a credential may be optional. That is, in some embodiments, the system may determine, based at least in part on certain criteria, that the user must prove access to a certain credential (e.g., password and/or username combination, fingerprint, gesture, retina scan, voice recognition, other biometric information, etc.) to log in to view details of a transaction. In some cases, such determination may be made if the certain criteria indicates that additional security or additional assurances as to the identity of the user are warranted (e.g., user is logging in from a device having a different Internet protocol address that has been previously used by user before, user is logging in from a public network or network determined by the system to be unsecured, predetermined threshold amount of time (e.g., 30 days), etc.) has passed since the user last logged on, etc.). In some implementations, the user may be logged in via a Federated authentication system provided by a Credential Service Provider. In some implementations, the user may be logged automatically without having to supply credentials or other personal information, as the system may recognize the user based on obtained information, such as the user's Internet protocol address, a HyperText Transfer Protocol cookie stored on the user device, and/or other information, such as browsing history, which may identify the user to the system with a satisfactory degree of certainty (i.e., likelihood that the user is correctly identified exceeds a threshold).

The user 102 may be an individual or some other entity authorized to conduct the first transaction 108A and view details about the first transaction 108A in accordance with permissions granted by the user account 112. Each of the first and second asset information 106A-06B may be an email address, telephone number, token, integrated circuit card identifier, or other information associated with an asset that can be confirmed as being owned by or under the control of the user 102. The first and second transactions 108A-08B may be any of a variety of transactions that may be conducted with the aid of an electronic device (e.g., personal computer, mobile phone, such as the computing device 2000 of FIG. 20). Examples of such transactions include purchasing one or more items or services from an online merchant/vendor, selling one or more items or services through an online marketplace, making a purchase in a physical store or marketplace using the electronic device to finalize payment, and so on. As an example, the first transaction 108A may be a current purchase of a topcoat and a top hat by the user 102, who used an email address as the first asset information 106A when making the purchase, and the second transaction 108B may be a previous sale of black shades and white gloves by the user, who used a mobile phone number as the second asset information 106B.

In the scenario 100, the user 102 is in the process of conducting the first transaction 108A. During this process the record matching service 104 may determine that details associated with the first transaction 108A suggest that the second transaction 108B may also be associated with the user 102. Upon this determination, the record matching service 104 may send a message to the user 102 inquiring whether the user 102 also owns or is in control of the second asset. This message sent to the user 102 may include instructions or other information for verifying the second asset information 106B; for example, the message may be sent to the second asset and may include a temporary verification code that the user 102 can input as confirmation into a corresponding field in a user interface in communication with the record matching service 104. After the user 102 has been confirmed to be an owner of or otherwise in control of the second asset, the user 102 may be permitted by the record matching service 104 to view details about the second transaction 108B.

Once the record matching service 104 confirms that the user 102 is the same user associated with the second transaction 108B, the record matching service may link the first and second transactions 108A-08B to the same identity (the identity 110). The identity 110 may be a unique identifier used to link the user 102 with the user account 112. The user account 112 may be one or more records containing data about the user 102, such as name, address, username, password, and other profile information.

FIG. 2 illustrates a scenario 200 of an embodiment of the present disclosure.

Specifically, FIG. 2 depicts an unauthorized entity attempting to access details of a second transaction 208B by performing a first transaction 208A using first asset information 206A in an attempt to impersonate a user associated with the second transaction 208B. The record matching service 204 may be a service such as the record matching service 104 of FIG. 1. The unauthorized entity 214 may be a user attempting to gain access to information to which the unauthorized entity 214 has insufficient permissions to access.

The first and second asset information 206A-06B may be information that can be readily proven to be owned by or under the control of an entity associated with a corresponding transaction, such as an email address or telephone number. An automobile vehicle identification number may be an example of data that is insufficient to operate as an asset in this context because, although it may be unique and assigned to a specific entity, it may not be readily proven (e.g., it does not provide a means to send/receive messages or other methods of confirmation) as being under the control of the entity associated with the transaction.

The first transaction 208A may be a purchase or a sale or some other type of transaction that the unauthorized entity 214 is conducting in an attempt to deceive the record matching service 204 into concluding that the unauthorized entity 214 is also associated with the second transaction 208B, which, in this scenario 200, is not the case. The second transaction 208 may be a purchase, sale, or any other transaction previously made by a different user than the unauthorized entity 214. The second transaction 208B was made in conjunction with the second asset information 206B, which, as can be seen in FIG. 2, is not under the control of the unauthorized entity 214. Because the unauthorized entity 214 does not have control of the second asset, the unauthorized entity 214 is forced to use a different asset, the first asset information 206A instead. As noted, the unauthorized entity 214 may have structured the first transaction 208A in an attempt to impersonate the user associated with the second transaction 208B. For example, the unauthorized entity 214 may have input the same given name, family name, and postcode as the user associated with the second transaction 208B, and may have even configured the user device to impersonate an Internet protocol address of the user associated with the second transaction 208B. Additionally, other transaction details of the first transaction 208A may be designed to be similar to the second transaction 208B; for example, if the unauthorized entity 214 is somehow aware that part of the second transaction 208B includes a particular game console, the first transaction 208A may include game media that is compatible with the particular game console. Taken as a whole, the record matching service 204 may conclude, in a manner described in Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, incorporated herein by reference, that the unauthorized entity 214 is likely the same user as associated with the second transaction 208B.

However, the system of the present disclosure may be configured to further confirm the identity of the unauthorized entity 214 before permitting the unauthorized entity 214 access to the details of the second transaction 208B. To this end, the unauthorized entity 214 may be prompted, as part of the transaction interface, to confirm whether the unauthorized entity is associated with the second asset. If the unauthorized entity 214 does not confirm control of the second asset, the unauthorized entity 214 will not be permitted to view details of the second transaction 208B, and furthermore, will not be linked to the identity associated with the second transaction 208B (the second identity 210B), and consequently be unable to access the second user account 212B. If the unauthorized entity 214 agrees to confirm control of the second asset, a confirmation message or code may be sent to the second asset that provides a way to confirm receipt of the message or code. However, because the unauthorized entity 214 in this scenario 200 is not in control of the second asset, the unauthorized entity 214 will not receive the confirmation message or code and consequently will not be able to confirm receipt of the message or code. Thus, the unauthorized entity 214 will again be thwarted and be unable to access details of the second transaction 208B or the second user account 212B. As a result, the unauthorized entity 214 will be viewed by the system of the present disclosure as having a separate identity than the user associated with the second transaction 208B, and the system may associate the unauthorized entity 214 with a separate identity (the first identity 210A) and account (the first account 212A), in isolation from the second identity 210B and the second user account 212B.

FIG. 3 illustrates a scenario 300 of an embodiment of the present disclosure.

Specifically, FIG. 3 depicts the scenario 300 of a first user 302A who conducts a first transaction 308A using first asset information 306A and conducts a second transaction 308B using second asset information 306B that is shared with a second user 302B. The second user 302B conducts a third transaction 308C using the second asset information 306B and conducts a fourth transaction 308D using third asset information 306C that is shared with a third user 302C. The third user 302C conducts a fifth transaction 308E using the third asset information 306C. One of the functions of the record matching service 304 is to match the users 302A-02C to respective user identities 310A-10C.

The record matching service 304 may be a service such as the record matching service 104 of FIG. 1. The asset information 306A-06C may be asset information such as telephone numbers and email addresses under the control of respective users. The users 302A-02C may be any of a variety of individuals who conduct transactions in a manner described within the present disclosure. As can be seen in the scenario 300, the first asset information 306A is only assigned to the first user 302A. Transactions conducted by the first user 302A using the first asset information 306A can be readily identified and confirmed by the record matching service 304 as corresponding to the first identity 310A.

However, it can be seen that the second asset is shared by both the first user 302A and the second user 302B. For example, the first user 302A and the second user 302B may be a husband and a wife respectively sharing a family email address or mobile phone. As another example, the first asset information 306A may be a personal email address for the first user 302A; whereas the second asset information 306B may be a corporate email address shared among multiple users 302A-02B. The record matching service 304 has the task of determining which of the identities 310A-10B correspond to the transactions 308A-08C, and which details of which of the transactions 308A-08C to allow the users 302A-02C access to.

As can be seen in the scenario 300, the second transaction 308B and the third transaction 308C were conducted using the same asset information (the second asset information 306B). However, based on details associated with each of the transactions 308B-08C, the record matching service 304 has determined that it is likely that the transactions 308B-08C are not associated with the same user. Therefore, the second transaction 308B has been associated with the first identity 310A and the third transaction 308C has been associated with the second user identity 310B. Consequently, in some embodiments, a user who attempts to log into the record matching service 304 using the second asset information 306B, may only be allowed to view transaction details associated with the second asset information 306B.

In other embodiments, if the first user 302A logs into the record matching service 304 using the second asset information 306B and seeks to access details about the first transaction 308A, the system of the present disclosure will begin the process to confirm that the first user 302A is the user associated with the first transaction 308A by sending a confirmation message to the first asset associated with the first asset information 306A. Upon receiving the confirmation message, the first user 302A can confirm that the first asset associated with the first asset information 306A is under the control of the first user 302A (in one of the various ways described in the present disclosure), whereupon the system of the present disclosure can allow the first user 302A access to the details of the first transaction 308A. However, the second user 302B logging into the system using the second asset information 306B would be unable to access details about the first transaction 308A because the second user 302 would not be able to prove control of the first asset associated with the first asset information.

Likewise, if the first user 302A logging into the record matching service 304 using the first asset information 306A seeks to access details of the second transaction 308B, the system of the present disclosure may send a confirmation message to the second asset. However, if the second asset is currently under the control of the second user 302B, confirmation may not be received by the first user 302A. In such a situation, in order for the second transaction 308B to be associated with the first identity 310A of the first user 302A, the first user 302A may wait until the first user has control of the second asset. Upon confirmation that the second transaction 308B and the second asset information 306B are associated with the first user 302A, both the first and second transactions 308A-08B may be linked to the first identity 310A. In some implementations, if a user logs into the record matching service 304 seeking to view details regarding the second transaction 308B, because the second transaction 308B is tied to the first identity 310A of the first user 302A and because the record matching service has a data indicating that the first user 302A is also in possession of the first asset information 306A, the record matching service may send a confirmation to the first asset information 306A in order to confirm that the user is the first user 302A associated with the second transaction 308B, and not another user (e.g., the second user 302B).

In some embodiments, the record matching service will additionally or alternatively ask for additional identifying information from the user (e.g., national identity number, password, etc.) in order to confirm the identity of the user who logged in using the second asset information 306B. For example, if one of the users 302A-02B logs in using the second asset information 306B, before determining whether to show details of the second transaction 308B or the third transaction 308C, the system of the present disclosure may request certain information in order to determine the identity of the user, such as the national identity number. The system may be configured to prompt the user for types of information determined to have a high probability of distinguishing users (e.g., the first user 302A and the second user 302B) from each other, such as birthdate, middle name, name of a parent, item, or amount of a most recent previous transaction, etc. If the information corresponds to the first user 302A, the first user 302A will be able to access the details of the second transaction 308B, but will be unable to access details of the third transaction 308C. Similarly, if the information corresponds to the second user 302B, the second user 302B will be able to access details of third transaction 308C but unable to access details of the second transaction 308B.

In the unlikely event that an asset, such as the asset associated with the second asset information 306B, is mistakenly associated with the first identity 310A of the first user 302A, in some embodiments the system allows the first user 302A to correct the mistake. That is, the system may present a list of assets that it believes are associated with the first user 302A, and the first user 302A may be presented with an option to disassociate any asset not belonging to the first user 302A. Similarly, the fourth transaction 308D and the fifth transaction 308E were conducted using the same asset information (the third asset information 306C), but the record matching service 304 has determined that they were made by separate users, the second user 302B and the third user 302C respectively. That is, the third asset information 306C may be shared between both users 302B-02C. If the second user 302B logs into the record matching service using the third asset information 306C and seeks to view details regarding the third transaction 308C made using the second asset information 306B, the system of the present disclosure may send a confirmation to the second asset to ensure that the user attempting to view details about the third transaction 308C is the second user 302B and not some other user.

In some embodiments, during a transaction, if the system of the present disclosure is unable to match the transaction with a known user, the system may create a new user identity associated with the user. Thus, it is possible for the same user to have multiple user identities, and if the user logged in using an asset associated with one user identity, the user may be unable to access transactions associated with a different user identity even if the same user conducted the transaction. In this manner, the system of the present disclosure will err on the side of data protection. However, in some implementations, the system of the present disclosure may permit corrections to misidentified users. For example, if the second user 302B and 302C are actually the same user, the second user 302B may notify the system (e.g., through an application programming interface or remote procedure call) that details for certain transactions associated with the third asset information 306C (i.e., the fifth transaction 308E) appear to be missing when the second user 302B is logged into the system and viewing transactions. The system of the present disclosure may perform steps to confirm that the second user 302B is indeed the user associated with the fifth transaction 308E, and, upon successful confirmation, may merge the third identity 310C with the second user identity 310B to correct the misidentification.

In some embodiments, an interface for the users may allow the users to correct/merge misidentified identities. For example, the record matching service 304 may make a determination whether a user is the same user as a previous user based on probabilities determined by votes of a random forest of the supervised model exceeding a probability threshold. There may be situations where some transactions were close to the probability threshold but did not exceed the probability threshold. In those cases, when a user logs in, the system may present the user with a list of asset information or basic details of one or more transactions that approached the probability threshold, and the system may prompt the user to confirm or deny whether the user is associated with the particular asset or transaction. Upon confirmation, the misidentified identities may be merged with the user identity.

In some implementations, there may be a hierarchical relationship between users who share an asset for conducting transactions. For example, the second user 302B may be a parent of the first user 302A and the third user 302C. In these implementations, the system of the present disclosure may store information indicating that the second user 302B is also allowed to access transactions made using asset information shared by the second user 302B (e.g., the second asset information 306B and the third asset information 306C). In such implementations, the second user 302B may be able to view details about the second transaction 308B and the fourth transaction 308D even though the transactions were conducted by the first user 302A and the third user 302C, because the transactions 308B-08C were conducted using asset information indicated in the system as being owned by the second user 302B.

In some embodiments, the user identities 310A-10C reflect a determination that certain transactions have the appearance of being related and being associated with a particular user, and the user identities 310A-10C may not actually be associated with any identifier or similar data. Consequently the user identity 310A-10C may not be stored (e.g., in a data store) within the system, but may be generated at any time or generated on the fly whenever a user logs into the system to determine transactions associated with that user. In some cases, the record matching service 304 may determine that it has likely misidentified users as the same user. For example, if the first user and a second user are twins, data collected during initial transactions by each of the users may result in a determination by the record matching service 304 that the users are a single user. However, after the first user and/or the second user conduct one or more subsequent transactions, the record matching service 304 may determine that the users are actually distinct users. In this event, upon the next login by one of the users, the system may prompt the user for confirmation that certain of the transactions are actually not associated with the user who is logged in. Upon this confirmation, the system may then correctly assign the transactions to separate first and second users.

FIG. 4 illustrates a scenario 400 of an embodiment of the present disclosure.

Specifically, FIG. 4 depicts a user 402 who has conducted a first transaction 408A, a second transaction 408B, and a third transaction 408C using first asset information 406A, and conducted a fourth transaction 408D using second asset information 406B. In the scenario, the user 402 has lost access to the first asset. For example, the user 402 may have changed to a different Internet service provider and lost his email mailbox at that address (the first asset information 406A) as a consequence. As another example, the user 402 may have obtained a new mobile phone with a new number and no longer has access to the mobile phone with the old number (the first asset information 406A).

In such an example, the user may be unable to access the transactions 408A-08C without contacting a customer service representative with the ability to reassign the transactions 408A-08C to a new asset upon further confirmation of the identity of the user 402. However, if the fourth transaction 408D, conducted using the second asset information 406B, was conducted while the user 402 still had control of the first asset and was validated during the fourth transaction 408D, the system may automatically allow the user 402 to access any of the transactions 408A-08C, because both asset information 406B-06A were validated in a same session by the user 402 before the first asset was lost.

In some embodiments, where the first asset ends up in the hands of an unauthorized user (e.g., stolen, hacked, sold, etc.), the unauthorized user would be unable to view details about (i.e., denied access to) the transactions 408A-08D unless the unauthorized user had additional identifying information about the user 402 (e.g., national identity number, password, etc.). That is, logging into the system of the present disclosure may require more than just possession of an asset for authentication. Furthermore, the user 402, upon losing the first asset, may notify customer service or other administrative entity for the record matching service 404 about the loss, and upon verification of the identity of the user 402, the second asset 406 may be blocked (i.e., denied access to). That is, it may no longer be considered by the system as a valid asset for login and access. Alternatively, in some embodiments where logging in may require only asset information and top-of-mind information, an unauthorized user, with access to the asset knowledge of top-of-mind information of the valid used, may be able to log in, but may only be able to view details about transaction associated with the asset. Note, in some of these embodiments, successful and/or failed attempts to access details about transactions associated with a validated asset may cause a notification to be sent to one or more other validated assets of the user. In this manner, should an asset fall into the hands of an unauthorized user, the valid user may be promptly notified, via the user's other assets, of unauthorized access attempts using that asset. In some of these embodiments, the user may be able to customize the types of notifications (e.g., successful access, unsuccessful access attempt, etc.) should be sent to which of the user's assets.

FIG. 5 illustrates an invoice interface 500 of an embodiment of the present disclosure. As illustrated in FIG. 5, the invoice interface 500, the interface includes sets of details 516 corresponding to previous purchases by the user (“Mac Bethad”) that are associated with a first asset information (“m.bethad@example.org”), and a list of other assets 506 that have been determined by the system to likely be associated with the user. As shown in FIG. 5, the list of assets may be displayed in a message box 518 with at least one control 524 (e.g., “validate” button) for initiating a process for validating the asset information corresponding to the other assets. The message box 518 may also include at least one field 522 for entering in a confirmation code to confirm a corresponding asset. It is contemplated that a separate interface may be launched for inputting the confirmation code in response to triggering the at least one control 524. The other assets 506 may correspond to a telephone, an email inbox, or other asset under the control of the user. The set of details 516 may include invoices, and may include information such as asset information used when conducting the particular transaction, items transacted, quantity, price, total price, tracking information, and so on.

The message box 518 may also include controls (not shown) for the user to indicate assets that are not associated with the user. For example, if the user does not recognize the phone number “212-555-7665,” the user may click a control to notify the system that the asset has been mistakenly associated with the user by the system and does not actually belong to the user. The system of the present disclosure may then disassociate that asset from the identity of the user by updating one or more tables of a database (e.g., for example, assigning a new user identifier to the transaction or transactions associated with the asset, associating the asset with the next most-likely user, as determined by a supervised model of embodiments of Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, incorporated herein by reference, or by setting flag on a field in an asset confirmation table of a database that indicates that the asset has been denied by the user), and the asset may subsequently may no longer be listed in the invoice interface 500 as an asset to validate.

Confirmation of assets and denial of assets by users as described in the present disclosure may provide data for training the random forest of the supervised model so that it can make improve the accuracy of its determinations of user identities. As described in detail in the embodiments of Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, some supervised models may be configured to determine whether two or more transactions should be associated with the same user identity, based on details associated with the transactions (e.g., given name, family name, address, Internet protocol address, birthdate, date/time of purchase, total price of the purchase, etc.). The random forests of the supervised models may have been trained using historical records of past transactions having at least one ground truth value. As explained in Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, a “ground truth value” may refer to a value that unambiguously corresponds to a target value/objective, which in this case may be an identity of the user. In the present disclosure, upon confirmation of an asset by a user associated with a particular user identity, the user identity can be considered a ground truth value because the user has unambiguously confirmed that the user identity corresponds to the user. This ground truth value and associated data may be subsequently utilized to update/retrain the supervised model so that, over time, the accuracy of the supervised model improves.

Similarly, when an asset is denied by a user (i.e., the user indicates the user is not associated with the asset), this too provides data that may be used to improve the accuracy of the supervised model. For example, transactions associated with this asset may be re-assigned to the next most likely user, and upon confirmation by that user, ground truth may be considered to be established and the supervised model can be updated/retrained with the new ground truth value. Alternatively, if transactions corresponding to the asset were previously used to update the supervised model (i.e., if the system incorrectly assumed that ground truth had been established for those transactions), upon denial of the asset by the user, those transactions may be disassociated from the user and may be disregarded when the supervised model is retrained/updated.

In some implementations, an interface such as the invoice interface 500 may allow the user to confirm or deny/disavow transactions in addition to or alternative to assets. For example, in a situation where multiple users share the same asset (e.g., husband and wife), such as the asset 306B of FIG. 3 shared by users 302A-02B, a first user 302A may notice that one or more transactions (e.g., the second transaction 308B) have been mistakenly associated with the first identity 310A of the first user 302A, when in actuality, the one or more transactions should be associated with the second user 302B (i.e., the second user identity 310B). The first user 302A, using functionality provided in an interface, may notify the system that the transaction should not be associated with the first identity 310A. In response to receiving the notification, the system may disassociate the second transaction 308B from the first identity 310A. In some cases, the system may update the association of the second transaction 308B to be associated with the second user identity 310B. In some of these cases, the system may prompt the second user 302B to confirm that the second transaction 308B should indeed be associated with the second user 302B before making that association. In any case, ground truth values for the transaction data corresponding to the second transaction 308B may be changed, and consequently the supervised model may be updated/retrained using the changed transaction data in a manner described above in order to improve the accuracy of the supervised model.

The supervised model may be updated/retrained regularly (e.g., nightly, weekly, monthly) or irregularly from transaction data where ground truth has been established in a manner described above. That is, in addition to or alternative to the original historical data used to train the random forest of the supervised model, the random forest include data collected from transactions conducted by embodiments of the systems of Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, incorporated herein by reference, and by feedback received from users of the system of the present disclosure that unambiguously connect assets and/or transactions to a particular user identity.

FIG. 6 illustrates an email interface 600 with an inbox containing a confirmation email message 622 received by a user in order to confirm an asset under the control of the user. In particular, the confirmation email message 622 has been sent to the email address given by the asset information (bethad-mac@example.com). The email message includes a confirmation code of “1606,” which the user may subsequently input into a field such as the at least one field 522 of an interface similar to the invoice interface 500 of FIG. 5 to prove that the user has control of the email mailbox corresponding to that address. The confirmation code in the confirmation email message 622 may be configured to expire after a certain time in order to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to the email mailbox. Furthermore, other methods of confirmation control of the asset are also contemplated; for example, the confirmation email message 622 may contain a link with the session key that, when activated, automatically opens a browser window and confirms the receipt of the confirmation email message 622. As noted, the asset need not necessarily be an email mailbox, and in the case where the asset is a mobile telephone, rather than the confirmation email message 622, a confirmation text message may be sent to the user with a similar type of confirmation code. Likewise, the confirmation code may expire after a certain time period. In an event where the asset information is a geographical address, the confirmation message with the confirmation code may be sent by postal mail.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating an example of a process 700 for confirming an asset in accordance with various embodiments. Some or all of the process 700 (or any other processes described, or variations and/or combinations of those processes) may be performed under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions and/or other data, and may be implemented as executable instructions executing collectively on one or more processors. For example, some or all of process 700 may be performed by any suitable system, such as the computing device 2000 of FIG. 20. The executable instructions and/or other data may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a computer program persistently stored on magnetic, optical, or flash media).

In 702, the system performing the process 700 may receive a login request from a user wishing to view details of a previously conducted transaction, such as an invoice for a purchase of one or more items or services from an online merchant website. The login request may be submitted as a result of interaction with the website or other user interface and may be, for instance, a HyperText Transfer Protocol request or other electronic request submitted by a computer system that displays the user interface. The login request may include asset information corresponding to a first asset, such as an email address corresponding to an email mailbox or a telephone number corresponding to a mobile telephone. The asset information corresponding to the first asset, in some cases, may be the asset information that was input by the user at the time the transaction was conducted. In other cases, the asset information may be asset information that was confirmed as being associated with an asset under the control of the user according to the confirmation workflow of 712 (below). As noted above, examples of asset information include email addresses, telephone numbers, and may further include information such as geographical addresses, retina scans, fingerprints, and other biometric information. The login request may also include additional information that at least partially authenticates the user thereby indicating the likelihood that the user logging in is indeed the user that corresponds to the asset information, and not an unauthorized entity attempting to impersonate the user. For example, the user may make the login request also providing, into a website form or other user interface (e.g., mobile application) information such as a birthdate, a national identity number, password, a maiden name of the user's mother, name of the street the user grew up on, or some other information known only to the user, and stored by the system for use in confirming identity of the user.

Further included in the operations of 702 are obtaining a user identifier for the user based on information provided with the request. In some implementations, the user identifier may be obtained by querying a database for a user identifier associated with identifying information provided with the request (e.g., national identity number, password, fingerprint, etc.). In other implementations, the user identifier may be obtained by passing information received in the request through a supervised model similar to the supervised model described in the Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, incorporated herein by reference, and receiving, as output, the user identifier that is determined to be likely associated with the user. In still other implementations, the user identifier may be obtained by querying a transaction database based on information provided with the request, such as the asset information. For example, the query may be a query to obtain a distinct user identifier associated with the particular email address passed as the asset information with the request. It is contemplated that there may be other methods of obtaining a user identifier in response to the request. Note that if the user identifier is unable to be obtained (e.g., no record returned from the query to obtain the distinct user identifier because no user identifiers were able to be matched to information that was received with the request and/or information received with the request was unable to be matched to a user matching with a high enough confidence score, as determined by a supervised model of the system of Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620 or the present disclosure), it may be an attempt by an unauthorized user to log in as the legitimate user, and in such a case the system may terminate the process, or perform other security measures, and not proceed to the next operation.

In the context of the process 700, “querying” may refer to a structured query language (SQL) query, some other database query, an application programming interface request (e.g., a web service request) to a service that vends such data, or some other method of obtaining data from a data store. The database may be an organized collection of data, such as tables, stored procedures, reports, views, and other database objects. Note that any structure configured to store and retrieve data in the manner described may be used, including file systems, relational databases, non-relational databases, object-oriented databases, comma delimited files, and other files. In some implementations, the structure may be a distributed data store.

Note that the user identifier may have been generated by a supervised model in accordance with an embodiment of the system of Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620, incorporated herein by reference. For example, during the course of executing or recording the transaction, a record matching service of the system of Appendix A of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/187,620 may determine, based on details (which may include asset information) associated with the transaction, whether the transaction is a first transaction conducted by the user, or whether the user is the same as a user associated with one or more previous transactions, based on stored details about the previous transactions. The determination may be made by a likelihood/probability of the user being the same, as determined from votes of a random forest of a supervised model, exceeding a threshold (e.g., 90%). If the likelihood does not exceed the threshold, the system may consider the user to be a new user of the system and create a new identity for the user. However, if the user is determined likely to be the same user, the new transaction may be associated with an identity shared by the one or more previous transactions. Note that, determining transactions associated with the same user may be performed asynchronously relative to the performance of the process 700, and may occur over time as the user engages in transactions at various times, perhaps with different merchants. For instance, each time the user engages in a transaction involving an online payment system, the online payment system may determine that the transaction is associated with the user and store the transaction in association with the user (e.g., by associating the transaction with an identifier of the user) in a database. Furthermore, asset information (e.g., email address, telephone number, etc.) may also be stored with the transaction in association with the user.

In 703, the system performing the process 700 may determine whether the asset associated with the first asset information (i.e., the asset information provided by the user in the login request of 702) has been confirmed as being under the control of the user. In other words, the system may determine whether this is the first time that the user has attempted to log in using the first asset information. Note, in some implementations, confirmation of the first asset information in accordance with the confirmation workflow of 712 may not be performed on initial login to verify the first asset, because the system may presume, based on information provided with the login information in 702, that the first asset is already under the control of the user. In other implementations, confirmation in accordance with the confirmation workflow of 712 of the first asset information may be performed each time the user logs in with that asset information. In some embodiments, the request to log in may itself include information confirming ownership of an asset, such as if the request includes biometric information or if the user interface collects such information before the request is submitted to the system performing the process 700.

In some implementations of the present disclosure, a database table (“confirmation table”) with at least fields for a user identifier and asset information or asset identifier may be present for storing whether assets are confirmed or not. In some cases, the table may include additional fields, such as fields for asset type, confirmation status, and so on. In some cases, if the user has not previously logged in with an asset, the user may not yet have an entry in the confirmation table. Thus, upon initial login by the user, the system performing the process 700 may execute a query on the confirmation table to determine whether the first asset has already been confirmed (i.e., information in the confirmation table associated with the first asset information indicating that the asset has been confirmed) in association with the identity of user logging in (e.g., in some cases, this may simply be an entry of the asset information in the confirmation table in association with the user identifier associated with the user, in other cases this may include a check of a confirmation status field in the confirmation table associated with the asset information and an identifier associated with the user, etc.).

Thus, if the query returns no records or if the query returns a confirmation status of unconfirmed, the system performing the process may proceed to 712. Otherwise, if the first asset has been determined to be confirmed, the system performing the process may proceed to 704. In 704, the system may query the confirmation table to obtain a set of records containing asset information of confirmed assets. As noted above, in some implementations the query may be performed by a separate system (e.g., database server, or some other backend server or service). Note that in some implementations, this list of asset information may have already been obtained when the confirmation table was queried in 703. For example, the confirmation table was queried in 703 against the user identifier, and a set of records containing asset information corresponding to confirmed assets may have been obtained. If the set of records was an empty set or if an examination of the set of records revealed that the first asset was not a member of the set, the system performing the process would have instead proceeded to 712 from 703. Consequently, at 704 the set of records containing asset information of confirmed assets may have already been obtained. Alternatively, rather than using a confirmation table, each transaction record in the transaction database corresponding to transactions performed by the user may be linked to or include asset information for confirmed assets for those transactions. Note that, in the context of FIG. 7, a “confirmed asset” may refer to an asset of which the user has proven ownership or has proven possession and control.

Next, the system may obtain a set of transactions that correspond to the confirmed assets obtained above. For example, a user may have input a telephone number as asset information when purchasing new shoes from an online merchant at a first time. At a second time, the user may have input an email address as asset information when purchasing a brand-new bag in another online purchase. An embodiment of the system of Appendix A, as previously described, may determine that the orders for the new shoes and brand-new bag are likely from the same user, and consequently assign the same user identifier to both transactions.

In this example, upon logging in with the telephone number to check the order status of the new shoes, the system performing the process 700 may confirm the mobile phone (first asset) corresponding to the telephone number. For example, the system may cause a short message service (SMS) message to be sent to the telephone number, or may utilize another method of confirmation, such as described below. Upon confirmation of the mobile phone, the system performing the process 700 may retrieve the transaction corresponding to the new shoes. However, the transaction corresponding to the brand-new bag may not be retrieved, because the asset associated with the brand-new bag transaction, the email account, has not yet been confirmed. At a time after the user also confirms the email account corresponding to the email address, if the user logs in using either the asset information of the telephone number or the email address, the system may retrieve both the transaction corresponding to the new shoes and the transaction corresponding to the brand-new bag. The details for the transactions may be displayed in an interface such as the invoice interface 500 of FIG. 5.

In 712, the system performing the process 700 may perform a confirmation workflow to confirm the asset corresponding to the asset information received in the login request of 702. As has been described in the present disclosure, the confirmation workflow may include sending a message to a location indicated by the asset information being confirmed. For example, the system may send a text message (e.g., an SMS message) to a device associated with a provided telephone number, or may send an email message to an email account/mailbox corresponding to a provided email address. A method by which the user can confirm receipt of the message, consumption of the message, and consent to associate the asset with the user identifier includes providing a unique code (e.g., a one-time password) in the message, and the user can input the unique code into a field of a webpage, submit the unique code from the webpage to the system performing the process 700, and the system can confirm that the received code matches the code that was sent. If the code does not match, the asset is not confirmed and the process 700 may be terminated and/or other security precautions may be executed by the system. In some cases, the unique code may be configured to expire after a certain amount of time, and in such cases, even if the unique code received does match the unique code sent, the asset may not be confirmed, as described above, because the unique code has expired. Similarly, a uniform resource locator may be embedded as a link in the message, and rather than requiring the user to manually enter a code into an interface, the message link may be clicked or otherwise activated by the user from the asset, which may cause a webpage to open and submit confirmation data to the system performing the process 700. As still another example, the system may place an automated voice call to a telephone associated with the telephone number, and automated voice call may provide an audio code (e.g., series of numbers and/or letters, one or more words, a phrase, etc.) to the user who answers the telephone, and the audio code may be entered in a similar manner as unique code provided in a text message. It is contemplated that other methods of confirming an asset, based on the provided asset information, are possible.

Once the asset has been confirmed, the system performing the process may store data indicating the confirmation of that asset. For example, the system may insert a record in the confirmation table that includes at least the user identity and the asset information that was just confirmed. As noted, in some implementations, the system may additionally insert information indicating the type of asset associated with the asset information and/or set a status flag indicating that the asset has been confirmed. Note that in other implementations where asset information and information indicating confirmation of assets are stored on a per transaction basis, the system at this stage may update corresponding transactions to indicate that assets have been confirmed. Thus, in either case, when a user logs in with asset information corresponding to any asset that has been confirmed for the user, the user may be provided access to details of all transactions that correspond to confirmed assets for that user.

In 710, the system performing the process 700 may determine whether there are additional unconfirmed assets (e.g., second assets) associated with the user identifier. This determination may be made by querying a transaction database for asset information (e.g., phone number, email address, etc.) provided with transactions that corresponded to the user (i.e., have been associated with the user identifier), but where the asset information provided with those transactions is not present within the set of asset information for confirmed assets, described above. Thus, in the example above, after the user confirms control of the telephone associated with the telephone number, the system may determine, by performing a query of the transactions associated with the customer identifier, that the email address corresponding to the brand-new bag transaction has not been confirmed. In another example, expanding on the example above, after the user has confirmed the telephone number associated with the purchase of the new shoes, the user purchases a pair of cheap sunglasses in a third transaction. In this third transaction, the user provides a second email address, different from the first email address provided for the brand-new bag transaction, as asset information for this third transaction. If the user logs into the system of the present disclosure using the first email address (i.e., the one that corresponds to the brand-new bag transaction), in the operations of 710, the system may discover the second email address during the query of the transaction database for asset information corresponding to unconfirmed assets. In such cases, the system may proceed to 711, whereupon the system may provide the user with the ability to confirm an asset corresponding to the newly discovered asset information (i.e., the email address). As depicted in the invoice interface 500 of FIG. 5, this may include listing asset information associated with unconfirmed assets, and providing controls to the user that initiate the confirmation workflow of 712 for that asset. It is contemplated various other manners of providing users with the ability to confirm unconfirmed assets are possible.

In additional or alternative embodiments, a user may only be able to access details corresponding to transactions associated with assets that were confirmed during a particular login session. For example, at a first time, a user logs into the system of the present disclosure with first asset information and confirms assets associated with the first asset information (first asset) as well as assets associated with second and third asset information (second and third assets). At a second time, the user logs into the system of the present disclosure using fourth asset information and confirms the asset associated with the fourth asset information. However, because the fourth asset was not confirmed at the first time (e.g., the transaction corresponding to the fourth asset may have occurred after the transactions associated with the first, second, and third assets), and because none of the first, second, and third assets have been confirmed at the second time, the user may be unable to view the transactions associated with the first, second, and third assets (i.e., they are not yet linked together). However, at the second time, the user may be prompted (e.g., via a web interface) to confirm any of the first, second, and third assets, and upon confirming any of those assets, all four assets may be linked (e.g., stored in association with each other in a database), and the user may be able to view details from any of the first, second, third, and fourth assets. Likewise, if the user logs in at a third time using asset information associated with any of the first, second, or third assets, the user may be prompted to confirm the fourth asset, and, upon confirmation, the user may be able to view details from any of the first, second, third, and fourth assets (e.g., because they will all be linked together).

In short, until such time as the system performing the process 700 receives confirmation that the assets associated with one or more transactions are under the control of the user, the system may deny access to details of the associated one or more transactions. After the system receives acknowledgement (e.g., input of a matching confirmation code into a user interface, indication that the user has clicked on an appropriate link in a message sent to a location indicated by asset information, receiving a reply to a sent message, etc.) that the assets are under the control of the user, the system may update relevant database records to indicate that the assets have been confirmed for the user. In some implementations, the update to relevant database records may include updating one or more transaction tables, whereas in other implementations the update to relevant database records may include updating one or more asset confirmation tables separate from the transaction tables. In either case, the user may subsequently be provided access to details of the transactions associated with the newly-confirmed assets. In other words, as a result of storing the information indicating that the assets have been confirmed, the user may be enabled to view all transactions associated with any confirmed asset simply by logging in using one of confirmed assets.

Once an asset has been confirmed, if the user subsequently logs in using the associated asset information, that asset may not need to be reconfirmed. However, in some implementations, the system performing the process 700 may force the user to reconfirm assets on a periodic (e.g., once every three months) or stochastic basis for security purposes, or may force the user to reconfirm assets based on the occurrence of certain events or fulfillment of certain conditions (e.g., user logs in from an Internet protocol address that is not recognized by the system as being previously associated with the user, a number of failed login attempts exceed the threshold, etc.). Note further that one or more of the operations performed in 702-13 may be performed in various orders and combinations, including in parallel. Note also that, unless otherwise specified, use of expressions regarding executable instructions (also referred to as code, applications, agents, etc.) performing operations that instructions do not ordinarily perform unaided (e.g., transmission of data, calculations, etc.) in the context of describing disclosed embodiments denote that the instructions are being executed by a machine (e.g., computer configured with processors that process the instructions), thereby causing the machine to perform the specified operations.

Embodiments of the above disclosure can be described in view of the following clauses:

-   -   1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:

under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions,

-   -   receiving a request to access a first set of details associated         with a first transaction conducted by a user, the request         including first information that corresponds to a first asset         under the control of the user;     -   determining an identity of the user based at least in part on         the first information;     -   identifying a second transaction likely to be associated with         the user, the second transaction being associated with second         information that corresponds to a second asset different than         the first asset;     -   requesting confirmation from the user that the second asset is         under the control of the user; and     -   upon receiving the confirmation, associating the first and         second transactions with the first and second information.

FIG. 8 illustrates an overview of the main components of a system 800 for implementing some embodiments described in the present disclosure. As illustrated in FIG. 8, the system 800 may be configured to facilitate a transaction, by way of communications over at least one network 810, between a remote user 804, using a user device 808, and a merchant system 806. The merchant system 806 may include at least one server 805 in communication with the user device 808 through the network 810.

The merchant system 806 may be a website or other Internet-accessible platform configured to provide goods and/or services to customers at a price. Note that although the system 800 is described in the context of an online marketplace, it is contemplated that the system may be usable in other contexts. For example the merchant system, rather than being an online marketplace, may be a system hosting a social media site, a news site, or other site configured to perform operations based on the identity of the remote user 804. The merchant system 806 may include a database 802 in communication with the at least one server 805.

The remote user 804 may be an individual attempting to purchase an item or service from the merchant corresponding to the merchant system 806. As noted, embodiments of the present disclosure can be implemented in other contexts; for example, the remote user 804 may be a user attempting to register or authenticate as a user of a media website hosted by the merchant system 806. As illustrated in FIG. 8, the remote users 804 may access, through the network 810 using the user device 808, a website, such as an online marketplace, that is hosted on the at least one server 805.

The database 802 may be an organized collection of data, such as tables, queries, reports, views, and other objects. The database 802 may be configured for the storage and retrieval of data for the merchant system 806. For example, the database 802 may include, among other things, information about the products being sold by the merchant, such as quantity in stock, price, description, images of the products, and so on. The at least one server 805 may be configured to host a website and/or other applications for the merchant. The database 802 may also be a repository for historical information 818, such as details about past orders, identifiers for customers who have previously purchased something from the merchant, and other such information. Examples of such repositories include those commercially available from Oracle®, Microsoft®, Sybase®, and IBM® as well as open-source repositories such as MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, MongoDB, and any other repository capable of storing, retrieving, and accessing structured or unstructured data.

The user device 808 may be an electronic computing device, such as a personal computer, mobile device, tablet computer, home theater device, or a device similar to the computing device 2000 of FIG. 20, configured to communicate with sites like the web site of the merchant system 806, such as through a browser and/or application programming interface. The network 810 represents the path of communication between the remote user 804 and merchant system 806 and/or the record matching service 814. Examples of the network 810 include the Internet, a local area network, a wide area network and Wi-Fi.

FIG. 8 specifically depicts the remote user 804 attempting to purchase an item 812 through the merchant system 806, such as through an application programming interface call or other user interface to the merchant systems 806. As noted, the element represented by the item 812 may alternatively be a service offered by the merchant in exchange for a fee. The at least one server 805 may be one or more computing devices similar to the computing device 2000.

The record matching service 814 may be a system comprising one or more computing devices configured to at least identify the remote user 804 from details 816 provided by the remote user 804 and/or the user device 808. The details 816 may include one or more details about the user (e.g., given name, family name, telephone number, email address, delivery address, billing address, postcode, etc.), the item 812 (e.g., item identifier, price, quantity, size, color, description, etc.), the user device 808 (e.g., Internet protocol address, browser version, operating system, etc.), and/or other details (e.g., current date, current time, etc.). As an example, if the details 816 received by the record matching service 814 include details for a large order of flowers by “Henry Gibson” from an online merchant, but records corresponding to the name “Henry Gibson” in the database 802 are typically orders for writing materials, the record matching service 814 may determine that the user 804 has a low probability of being the same “Henry Gibson” as was found in the database 802. Consequently, the record matching service 814 may assign a new identifier to the remote user 804.

The record matching service 814 may be configured to receive the details 816 from the remote user 804 via an application interface call or other user interface component configured to communicate with the record matching service 814 through the network 810 (e.g., the Internet). The record matching service 814 may be configured to determine, based at least in part on the details 816, an identity of a remote user 804 at least to a certain degree of confidence, perform a credit assessment of the determined remote user 804, and/or handle payment for purchase from the merchant by the remote user 804. The record matching service 814 may be configured to communicate with components of the merchant system 806 in order to determine an identity of the remote user 804 based on information such as the historical information 818. Based on this information, the record matching service 814 may communicate to the merchant system 806 a result 822 indicating a determined identity of the remote user 804 and, in some cases, a confidence score reflecting a likelihood that the determined identity is actually the identity of the remote user 804. The record matching service 814 may also be used in an automated payment system that may communicate with third party systems 820 (e.g., banks, credit card services, or other financial organizations), such as for the purpose of determining whether to extend credit to the remote user 804. For example, as a result of the remote user 804 indicating to proceed with the purchase of the item 812, the merchant system 806 may send a purchase order request to an automated payment system of the record matching service 814. The purchase order request may include information such as a session identifier for identifying the user device 808 and/or other control data.

In the system of the present disclosure, the record matching service 814 may attempt to complete the user purchase even before the remote user 804 chooses which payment method to use. This may be achieved by creating a “reservation for credit,” and extending credit to the customer as a result. The reservation for credit may be similar to a reservation made by a credit card company in response to receiving a request for credit authorization. That is, the record matching service may determine a credit limit for the remote user 804 that the record matching service 814 will honor for purchases from the merchant of the merchant system 806, based on certain details of the transaction, such as the goods being purchased, the merchant identity, the amount of purchase, the type of payment plan, the customer's purchasing ability, customer's payment history, and/or the customer's most recent purchasing activity. In some cases, the record matching service 814 may determine not to extend credit to the remote user 804. In some cases, the credit limit may apply only to the specific transaction, whereas in other cases the credit limit may apply overall to one or more transactions between the remote user 804 and one or more merchants.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example 900 of an embodiment of the present disclosure. Specifically, FIG. 9 depicts matching a customer 904 to an identity associated with at least one of the customers 924A-24C. The customer 904 may be identified by the system of the present disclosure using details 916 associated with an order checkout 912. Note that the order corresponding to the order checkout 912 may not yet have been placed; in other words, the identification of the customer 904 may be made before the customer 904 even completes a purchase transaction. In some cases, the identification may be made even before checkout; i.e., based on one or more details received about or provided by the customer 904. The details 916 may include one or more details relevant to the customer and/or the transaction, such as the items being purchased, the price of the items, time of day, Internet protocol address of the device being used by the customer 904 making the purchase, given name of the customer, family name of the customer, postcode, telephone number, email address, and so on.

The identities of the customers 924A-24B may be stored in a data store of historical records 918 in association with details 926A-26C that correspond to the historical records 922A-22C. A benefit provided by the system of the present disclosure is that the customer 904 may be identified with a certain amount of certainty/confidence requiring only minimal input or top-of-mind input from the customer 904. For example, if the system of the present disclosure has access to historical records 918 indicating that “Martha Hudson,” at the address 221A Baker Street, places an order for tea with a particular online merchant on the second day of every month from a particular Internet protocol address, if the customer 904 places an order for tea from the particular online merchant on May 2nd from the particular Internet protocol address, the system may determine, based on these details, with a certain amount of confidence that the customer 904 is Martha Hudson.

In some examples, “top-of-mind” information may refer to details that are so familiar to the customer 904, that they require little effort to recall and/or input. For example, the customer 904 can likely remember his/her given name and family name with ease. However, depending on how common such given name and family name are, and input of a given name and a family name may not provide sufficient confidence that the customer 904 is not just a different customer with the same name as, say, customer 924B. However, the customer 904 is also likely to remember his/her email address and birthdate with little effort, and an email address or birthdate may provide greater confidence that the customer 904 is the same as another customer. Consequently, an input of an email address and/or a birthdate in conjunction with one or more other top-of-mind values may provide sufficient confidence that the customer 904 is the same as a customer associated with a historical record, or may provide sufficient confidence that the customer 904 is not the same as the customer.

Conversely, not all customers however may have their phone number at the top of their mind, and few customers will be able to recall one of their credit card numbers with ease or at all. Therefore, even though such information has a lot of value in providing confidence that the customer 904 is or is not the same customer as another customer, it may be less preferable, from a user experience standpoint, to demand such information from the customer 904. On the other hand, an Internet protocol address has much value in identifying a particular customer, and can be obtained from the customer device rather than the customer. Accordingly, one of the objects of the present disclosure includes determining a customer identity from information intrinsic to the transaction (e.g., Internet protocol address of the device being used by the customer) and/or information easily recalled and input by the customer. Note too, that other types of input are contemplated, such as audio (e.g., voice and speech recognition), gesture and pattern recognition (e.g., gesture detected via image sensor, signature drawn on a touch screen, pattern of mouse pointer motion, etc.), and biometric input (e.g., thumbprint, etc.).

In FIG. 9, an identity of “Customer A” is associated with a record 922A and a set of details 926A, an identity of “Customer B” is associated with a record 922B and a set of details 926B, and an identity of “Customer C” is associated with records 922C-22D and respective sets of details 926C-26D. As can be seen in the example 900, the system of the present disclosure has identified the customer 904, based on the details 916, as “Customer B.” Note that the system of the present disclosure does not necessarily attempt to locate a historical record that is the most similar to the details 916, but, instead, locates the historical record based on frequencies of values in the details 916. For example, if historical records 922A and 922C-22D include, in corresponding details 926A and 926C-26D, a postcode of “90210,” while historical record 922B includes in corresponding details 926B a postcode of “40516.” Here, it may be that the postcode “90210” occurs with a frequency of, for example, 3 in 4, while the postcode of “40516” occurs with the frequency of 1 in 4. In this manner, the system of the present disclosure may be able to narrow down the identity of the customer 904 based upon the frequencies that details 916 occur within the historical records 918. For example, consider two different potential matches: A first potential match has a first user with a postcode having a frequency of 1 in 4 potentially matched to a first order having a postcode frequency also of 1 in 4 (0.25). A second potential match has a second user with a postcode having a frequency of 2 in 4 (0.5) is potentially matched to a second order having a postcode frequency of 2 in 4. Because of the lower frequency of the first potential match, the first potential match is more likely to be correct than the second potential match. This, combined with other frequencies for different fields (e.g., by using a supervised model, such as a random forest) allows for high probability matches using the frequencies for field values rather than the field values themselves.

FIG. 10 illustrates another example 1000 of an embodiment of the present disclosure. Specifically, FIG. 10 depicts a user interface 1028 such as might be used during part of a record checkout process in a transaction between a customer and an online merchant. The example 1000 shows that details 1016 have been entered into the user interface 1028 by a customer. The details 1016 are provided to a record matching service 1014. The record matching service 1014 analyzes the details 1016, with reference to historical records 1018 stored in a data store 1002, and, based on the analysis, provides a set of results 1022 to a business rule management system 1030. The business rule management systems 1030 may determine, based on the set of results 1022 received from the record matching service 1014, an identity for the customer associated with the details 1016 or may determine that additional details are needed from the customer, and communicate this determination to the merchant and/or the user interface 1028.

The record matching service 1014 may be a service provided to merchants, website owners, or other users that is designed to find a closest match between the details 1016 and at least one record from a set of historical records 1018. To that end, when the record matching service 1014 receives the details 1016, the record matching service 1014 attempts to determine whether the customer entering the details 1016 is associated with a historical record and what other historical records may also be associated with the customer.

The data store 1002 may be a repository for data objects, such as database records, flat files, and other data objects. Examples of data stores include file systems, relational databases, non-relational databases, object-oriented databases, comma delimited files, and other files. In some implementations, the data store 1002 is a distributed data store. The details 1016 may be information similar to the details 916 of FIG. 9, and may include information such as given name, family name, Internet protocol address, email address, etc. As shown in the example 1000, a customer has entered “Mac,” “Bethad,” and “PA76 6SQ” in the given name, family name, and postcode fields respectively in the user interface 1028. The user interface 1028 provides the details 1016 to the record matching service 1014 in a request to determine the identity of the customer.

Note, it is also contemplated that the methods of the present disclosure may be actively and incrementally repeated as a customer enters more input, such as, for example, on a character by character basis. For example, after the customer types the letter “M,” for the given name, the system may attempt to perform the process of the present disclosure to determine whether the customer can be identified with sufficient certainty (e.g., confidence score of 0.9 or above) from the first initial of the given name. After the customer types, “a” in the given name field, the system of the present disclosure may attempt to determine the customer's identity from the first two letters of the given name, “Ma,” and so on. Upon determining the customer's identity with acceptable certainty, the system may respond by pre-populating the remaining field or by prompting the user to verify the determined customer identity (e.g., “Are you ‘Mac Bethad’ of postcode PA76 6SQ′?”).

In some embodiments, the order of input fields and the actual input fields displayed in the user interface 1028 will vary based on information value associated with the particular input field type. For example, an email address and birthdate may be determined to be the most useful field for identifying a particular user. In such a case, rather than requesting given name, family name, and postcode, as displayed in FIG. 10, the fields may simply be email address and birthdate and the user identity can be determined from only those two fields. Similarly, in some of these embodiments, input fields can dynamically vary based on which input fields are determined to be the most useful for identifying the user based on information already known about the user. For example, after the user enters his given name, “Mac,” into the given name field of the user interface 1028, the system of the present disclosure may determine that only two users with the first name, “Mac,” are found in historical records, but that they reside at different postcodes. Consequently, in this example, the system may cause the user interface 1028 to hide the family name field, and only prompt the user to further fill out the postcode field. If the postcode field value matches the postcode of one of the two “Macs” in the historical records, the system may determine that the current user is the same as the matching “Mac.” If the postcode field matches neither of the two “Macs,” the system may determine either to prompt the user for additional information (e.g., family name) that may distinguish the two users, or may assume that the user is a new user and create a new user identity for the new “Mac” at the new postcode. Note that, in various embodiments, a match does not necessarily require equality. For example, two values may match if they are not equal, but mathematically equivalent. As another example, two values may match if they satisfy one or more matching criteria (e.g., “kat” may match “Kathryn” if the matching criteria specifies that, in a case-nonspecific manner, only the first three characters must be the same). Generally, any way of determining whether there is a match may be used.

An advantage provided by the system of the present disclosure is that separate transactions may be determined as associated with the same user merely from details associated with the transactions, and then the separate transactions may be linked to the same user identifier. The details may include top-of-mind information input from the user and/or information collected during the conduct of the transaction (e.g., Internet protocol address of the user device, geolocation data, such as from a global positioning system, etc.). Although it is contemplated that usernames and/or passwords may be additionally or alternatively utilized by embodiments of the present disclosure, in many embodiments, a user account associated with the user identifier may be created as an account without recourse to a conventional process of establishing a shared secret (e.g., username/password) between the user and the service provider in order for the user to have administrative access to the user account. In some embodiments, the user may be prompted to confirm control of one or more assets (e.g., mobile telephone, email account, etc.) associated with the transaction as additional assurance of identity of the user).

Confirming control of the asset, combined with, in some cases, any details associated with the session (e.g. Internet protocol address of the user device, any identifying information provided, etc.) may be used by embodiments of the present disclosure to determine, with sufficient certainty (e.g., confidence score exceeding a threshold) that the identity of the user is the user authorized to access the account, that credential (e.g., username/password) verification may not be required (i.e., superfluous). In this way, the system of the present disclosure can avoid the complexity of managing one or more sets of credentials for each user, and improve security by avoiding the need for complex password requirements and passwords, which may be insecurely protected or easily forgotten by users. Furthermore, any details input by the user may simply be top-of-mind information (e.g., email address, telephone number, etc.) or information already associated with the transaction (e.g., items selected for purchase, payment method, etc.), thereby improving usability of the interface for the user.

Although depicted within a single data store, the historical records 1018 may be distributed among multiple data stores accessible to the record matching service 1014, and the multiple data stores may even be distributed among multiple geographic locations. In some implementations, the historical records 1018 may reside in one or more data stores of the provider of the record matching service 1014, whereas in other implementations, the historical records 1018 may reside with individual merchants or with a third-party that contracts with the in the individual merchants. For example, some of the historical records 1018 may be stored in a data store of an online merchant in the United States, and some other of the historical records 1018 may be stored in another data store of another online merchant in Europe. In some implementations, the record matching service 1014 may attempt to match the user only with a historical record 1018 associated with the particular merchant with whom the user is conducting the transaction. In still other implementations, the record matching service may attempt to match the user only with a historical record associated with a geographic location (e.g., specific to a particular country, state, postcode, etc.) of the merchant or of the user (e.g., as may be determined by the user's Internet protocol address). On the other hand, in some implementations, the record matching service 1014 may attempt to match the user with a historical record from all of the historical records 1018 to which the record matching service 1014 has access. In some embodiments, a particular scheme for partitioning the historical records 1018 (e.g., by country, by continent, by age of the historical record, etc.) within the data store 1002 is determined based on what will allow the system of the present disclosure to identify the customer within a particular time threshold (e.g., 50 milliseconds). In other words, the historical records may be country-specific and/or merchant specific.

The set of results 1022 may be a set of user identifiers and/or historical record identifiers for historical records associated with respective user identifiers, and may include a score for each of the user identifiers reflecting a level of confidence that a supervised model of the record matching service 1014 has that the respective user identifier is associated with the same user as the user that input the details 1016. The user interface 1028 may be a web-based user interface such as a hypertext markup language page, widget, hypertext markup language form, set of JavaScript code, other web-based technology, or any combination of the above that allows communication between the user and the record matching service 1014 and/or an online merchant. Alternatively, the user interface 1028 may be a standalone application executing on a computing device, such as a personal computer, tablet computer, a cellular phone, or kiosk. The user interface 1028 may even be implemented as a remote procedure call in vote from a command line. The business rule management system 1030 may be a hardware and/or software component configured to evaluate the results 1022 from the record matching service in order to determine an identity for the user associated with the details 1016. In some implementations, the business rule management systems 1030 may be a component of the record matching service 1014.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example 1100 of a business rule management system 1130 which makes a determination of a user identity 1148 of a user whose record-related details yielded the set of results 1122 received from a supervised model of a record matching system of the present disclosure. The business rule management system 1130 may be a system similar to the business rule management system 1030 of FIG. 10. The business rule management system 1130 may utilize a cutoff value 1150 for determining which, if any, of the results in the set of results correspond to the user. The cutoff value 1150 may be a value which has been determined to be the appropriate balance between precision and recall. In other words, for cases where the determination of user identity needs to be very accurate (e.g., in cases where credit is being extended to the user, where access to sensitive information is being granted to a user, etc.) the cutoff value 1150 may be higher than for cases where accuracy of the user identity is not as critical (e.g., determining user identity in record to open a technical support ticket, determining user identity in record to provide targeted advertising, etc.).

For example, when determining the identity of a user in order to complete a transaction for an online purchase and bill the online purchase to the correct person, it may be important to set the cutoff value 1150 to 0.9, as is shown in the example 1100. This may reflect, that at least 90% of the decision trees of the supervised model (see the supervised model 1446 of FIG. 14) voted that the user associated with the details is the same as the user associated with a set of records having scores at or above the cutoff value 1150. On the other hand, in a case where the user identity is being determined to open a technical support ticket, the cutoff value 1150 may be 0.51, suggesting that only 51% or more of the decision trees of the supervised model need agree that the user associated with the details is the same as a user associated with the set of records having scores at or above the cutoff value 1150.

As shown in FIG. 11, only one user, user “58825,” achieved a score at or above the cutoff value 1150. Consequently, the business rule management system 1130 may determine that the user identity 1148 of the user associated with the input details correspond to user “58825.” In cases where none of the results meet or exceed the cutoff value 1150, the business rule management system 1130 may respond to the merchant or to the user interface either that additional details are required in record to determine the user identity 1148 with sufficient certainty or that the user identity 1148 could not be determined. If the user identity 1148 is unable to be determined, the merchant may consider the user to be a new user, and consequently caused a new user ID to be generated for the current user.

In a situation where multiple user IDs receive scores above the cutoff value 1150, the business rule management system 1130 may select the highest scoring user ID as the user identity 1148, or may use some other scheme to select the user identity 1148 from the multiple user IDs (e.g., selecting the second highest scoring user ID, selecting a user ID corresponding to the most recent historical record, selecting a user ID corresponding to the historical record with the highest price, etc.). In some embodiments, if multiple user IDs receive scores above the cutoff value 1150, the business rule management systems 1130 will request or cause the merchant to request additional details from the user in order to determine which of the multiple user IDs is associated with the current user. As an example, if three different user IDs score above the cutoff value 1150, the current user may be asked to input his/her phone number. In such an example, the additional detail of a phone number may affect the scoring such that all but one user ID sinks below the cutoff value 1150, And consequently that user ID may be determined as the user identity 1148.

In some cases, when multiple user IDs receive scores above the cutoff value 1150, the business rule management system may initiate a process for determining whether two or more of different user IDs in the results 1122 actually correspond to the same user, and should be consolidated under a single user ID. An example of such a process may be to ask the user that entered the details to confirm details of past historical records.

FIG. 12 illustrates an aspect of an embodiment 1200 of the present disclosure/etc. As illustrated in FIG. 12, the embodiment 1200 includes a record matching service 1214 that receives details 1216 from a user (e.g., from an interface similar to the user interface 1028 of FIG. 10) into a search component 1232. The search component 1232 may transform the details 1216 into one or more search terms 1234 to query against historical records in a data store 1202. Then, matching records 1236 and frequencies 1238 of occurrence of the search terms may be provided to a ranking component 1240 of the record matching service, which may rank the matching records 1236 based on the frequencies 1238. The top ranking records 1242 may then be provided to a supervised model 1244, which may score the top ranking records and output the results 1222.

Similar to the data store 1002 of FIG. 10, the data store 1202 may be repository for data objects, such as database records, flat files, and other data objects. The record matching service 1214 may be a system comprising various hardware and software configured to perform the functions of the search component 1232, the ranking component 1240, and the supervised model 1244 as a service to third parties such as merchants and or users of merchants.

The details 1216 may be a details about the current state of a user record provided to the record matching service 1214 by a merchant and/or input by a user. The details 1216 may be similar to the details 916 described in conjunction with FIG. 9, and may include information such as an Internet protocol address of a computing device being used by a user, an identity of a merchant, one or more identities of items selected for purchase by the user, user given name, user family name, postcode, email address, telephone number, time of day, date, and other information. The search component 1232 may be hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software configured to receive the details 1216, determine the set of search terms 1234, and may query the data store 1202 based on the set of search terms 1234.

The search terms 1234, for example, may be a value of a particular field (e.g., given name field, such as values of “frank,” “lars,” “amy,” etc.), may be a portion of a particular field (e.g., domain part of an email address, such as values of “blazingmail.com,” “example.org,” “osu.edu,” etc.), or combinations of values of one or more fields or portions of fields (e.g., combination of given name and family name, such as a value of “winstonchurchill.” The search terms 1234 may be normalized; in other words, they may be converted to upper or lower case, whitespace may be added or removed, letters with diacritic marks are converted to a non-diacritic form, or certain other types of characters may be removed (e.g., nonnumeric characters in a telephone number may be removed). For example, the details of “Winston,” “Churchill,” “10 Downing Street,” for given name, family name, and address fields, may yield search terms such as “winston” (normalized given name), “churchill” (normalized family name), “winstonchurchill” (combination of given name and family name), “10” (house number), “downing” (street name), “win” (first three letters of given name), and “dow” (first three letters of street name). As another example, an Internet protocol address may be transformed into a standard format (e.g., “xxx.xxx.xxx”). As still another example, nonnumeric characters may be removed from a phone number value (e.g., “(212) 555-7665” converted to “2125557665”).

The matching records 1236 may be a set of historical records containing at least one match to a search based on at least one of the search terms 1234. For example, a historical record associated with the user, “Winnie Jones,” may be returned based on the first three letters of given name, “win,” mentioned above. A historical record may be a set of details corresponding to a record placed by a customer with a merchant. The set of details may be in the form of one or more database records, a character-delimited string, or some other format.

The frequencies 1238 may be one or more of term frequencies, inverse document frequencies, or other values reflecting frequencies that each of the search terms 1234 occur within the entire set of historical records, a particular record, or a particular field in a record. Further details on frequencies may be found in the description of FIG. 17. However, as an example, in addition to the historical records matching, “win,” as the first three letters of the given name (described above), a value corresponding to the rarity of matching, “win,” in a first three letters of the given name may be passed as one of the frequencies 1238. For example, if the first three letters “win” occurs in the given name in 65,000 records out of 2 million historical records, an inverse document frequency value of “4.9” may be passed to the ranking component 1240 to reflect the commonality of the search term. In other words, the larger the inverse document frequency value, the greater the likelihood that an individual will correspond to any given record that is retrieved using that search term.

The ranking component 1240 may be hardware, software, or combination of hardware and software configured to rank the matching records 1236 based on the received frequencies 1238. The matching records 1236 may be ranked in various ways, one example being to sum, for each matching record, the frequencies 1238 corresponding to search terms 1234 that were matched in the matching record. In other words, for a record that only matches “win” in the first three characters of the full name of “Winnie Jones,” the record may be given a value of 4.9. Whereas, a record for “Copperknob Churchill” (full name) at “10A Downing Street,” (address) that matches the family name “churchill,” having an inverse document frequency of “21.5” and the street name of “downing,” having an inverse document frequency of “34.7” may be given a value of 56.2. When the records are later ranked and filtered, the record for “Copperknob Churchill” may consequently be ranked higher than “Winnie Jones.”

Note that if a particular search term is not found/matched in a particular historical record, the frequency may be negative. So, for the example of “Winnie Jones,” the family name “jones” may have an inverse document frequency of 2.1. Therefore for every matching record in the matching records 1236 that does not contain the family name “jones,” 2.1 may be subtracted from the rank calculation for that matching record. In a similar manner, if a particular detail was not provided with the details 1216 or was left blank by a user, a value of zero may be considered for that field. For example, if the user associated with the details 1216 is “Winnie Jones,” and a particular matching record has a blank or no value for family name, the value of 2.1 may be neither added nor subtracted when computing the ranking that particular record (i.e., the contribution of that field may be considered zero).

The top ranking records 1242 may then be provided to the supervised model 1244. The top ranking records may be a predetermined number of the matching records 1236 with the highest rank values. The predetermined number may be a quantity determined to most likely include a record associated with the user corresponding to the details 1216 (e.g., top 30 records, top 100 records, top five records, etc.). The top ranking records 1242 passed to the supervised model 1244 may only include details such as a user identifier associated with the record and a frequency value for each search term matched in the particular top ranking record. In some cases, an identifier for the top ranking historical record may also be included. However, in some embodiments, actual details, search terms, and field values of the top ranking records 1242 are not passed to the supervised model 1244.

The supervised model 1244 may be a random forest generated based at least in part on a large number of historical records containing information about individual users (e.g., population data), which may or may not include the historical records stored in the data store 1202. The supervised model 1244 may be a set of decision trees (e.g., 1,000 trees) generated as a result of an analysis of a large reference data set having at least some values that correspond to fields in the historical records of the data store 1202. The decision nodes of each decision tree in the set of decision trees may be configured with a condition for evaluating the frequencies 1238 of fields that were matched in the top ranking records 1242. The result of each evaluation may be a vote as to whether the particular top ranking record is (e.g., vote of 1) or is not likely (e.g., vote of 0) to be associated with the user of the details 1216. Each decision tree of the set of decision trees may vote for each of the top ranking records 1242, and once each of the decision trees has voted for the top ranking record, the number of votes for the top ranking record 1242 may be summed to yield a confidence score for the top ranking record 1242. For example, if 1247 trees vote that a particular top ranking record is likely associated with the user of the details 1216, the confidence score output with the results 1222 may be 1247. Note, in some implementations the confidence score may be represented as a percentage or proportion of the total number of voting trees; that is, in the example above the confidence score may be output as 54.7% or 0.547 instead. In some implementations, the records in set of top ranking records may be evaluated by the supervised model in series, whereas in other implementations the records in the set of top ranking records may be evaluated by the supervised model in parallel.

Note too, that in some implementations, each decision tree may be able to make more complex votes than a simple yes or no (1 or 0). For example, in some implementations, a decision tree may output 1 for yes, −1 for no, and 0 for too close to call or indeterminable. In still another implementation, each decision tree's vote may reflect the confidence that particular decision tree has that the particular top ranking record is associated with the user of details 1216; for example, a particular decision tree may output 0.321 if it determines that the particular top ranking record is only 32.1% likely to be associated with the user of details 1216. As with the binary vote described above, such alternative implementations may be scored by adding the votes of each of the voting trees in the random forest. The results 1222, then, may be similar to the results 1022 of FIG. 10 and may include, for example, one or more of the top ranking records 1242 and, in some cases, a score for each of the top ranking records 1242 generated by the supervised model 1244. Additional details about the decision trees in the supervised model 1244 may be found in the descriptions of FIGS. 13 and 14. Note too that each decision tree may be linearized into a set of decision rules (e.g., of the form “if [condition1] and [condition2] and [condition3], then return [result1]; if [condition1] and [condition2] and not [condition3], then return [result2],” etc.).

FIG. 13 illustrates an example decision tree 1300 as may occur in the random forest of the supervised model in an embodiment of the present disclosure. Note that the decision tree depicted in FIG. 13 is for illustrative purposes only and may differ from actual decision trees in the supervised model. In the decision tree 1300, at 1302, input values representing a frequency value associated with a particular field of a top ranking record, similar to one of the top ranking records 1242 of FIG. 12, may be received. For example, a first input (e.g., given name) may be a frequency value of “4.9,” a second input (e.g., family name) may be a frequency value of “21.5,” and a third input may be a frequency value of “1.3.”

In this example, at 1304 the decision tree may compare the first input frequency value of 4.9 against a first threshold. Note that the first threshold may have been determined when the random forest of the supervised model was generated, based on a data set and the likelihood to arrive at a ground truth based on a given frequency. For example, the first threshold, as determined when the random forest was generated, maybe 4.3. In such a case, the system traversing the decision tree may immediately proceed to 1314 and cast a vote of confidence that the user associated with the particular details is the same user as the user associated the particular top ranking record. That is to say, at a time when the decision tree 1300 was generated, it may have been determined that, if there is a match of the field associated with the first input (e.g., given name) with an inverse document frequency of 4.3, it is more likely than not that the user associated with the details and the user associated with the particular top ranking record is the same user. However, if the first threshold is 5.1, then the system traversing the decision tree may proceed to 1306, whereupon the second input may be compared with a second threshold. If the second threshold value is 12.9, the system traversing the decision tree may proceed to 1308 because 21.5 is greater than 12.9.

In 1308, the third input may be compared with a third threshold. If, for example, the third threshold is 1.033, the system may proceed to 1314 to output of vote of confidence that the user associated with the details is the same as the user associated with the particular top ranking record, because 1.3 is greater than 1.033. On the other hand, in another example, if the third threshold is 8.2, the system would proceed to 1310 to output a vote of no-confidence.

However, in the example of FIG. 13, in 1306 if the second threshold is 35.5, because 21.5 is less than 35.5, the system traversing the decision tree 1300 may proceed to 1312. As can be seen by 1312 inputs may be compared against thresholds multiple times while traversing the decision tree. Here, the first input is again compared, but this time against a different threshold, a fourth threshold. Thus if the first input is greater than the fourth threshold the system traversing the decision tree 1300 may cast its vote of confidence in 1314. Otherwise, the system may instead proceed to 1310 and cast a vote of no-confidence.

In the supervised model, there may be multiple decision trees of various configurations making similar decisions as described above in parallel or in series with each other. After each of the decision trees in the supervised model have cast their votes, the votes may be summed, and a score based on the summation of votes for the particular top ranking historical record may be output. Note that in some implementations, actual field values and/or details may be provided to the supervised model, and the decisions of the decision trees may be based on field values and/or details rather than frequencies as described above. However, an advantage provided by the supervised model making decisions based on frequencies instead of actual field values may be that decisions can be made without regard to certain differences between regions and cultures. For example, in the United States, the name “Michael” may be very common, however in Argentina, “Michael” may be much less common. On the other hand, the name “Santiago” in Argentina may be common, but in the United States may be uncommon. Therefore, a supervised model based on frequencies may be agnostic as to the regional origin of the details and/or location of the merchant.

Another advantage provided by passing frequency values to the supervised model instead of actual details or field values is that, in a system where the supervised model is remotely located from or otherwise separate from the record matching service, if the input to the supervised model is intercepted by an unauthorized entity, little if any information about actual records or users would be compromised. Consequently, the supervised model itself could be implemented as a separate standalone service for merchants. For example, a merchant may have its own record matching system and may upload a set of frequencies in a manner similar to how the ranking component 1240 of FIG. 12 provides frequencies to the supervised model 1244, and, in response, the supervised model service may provide results similar to the results 1222 back to the merchant.

FIG. 14 illustrates an example 1400 of a supervised model 1444 of an embodiment of the present disclosure. As illustrated in FIG. 14, the example 1400 may include a set of frequencies 1438 of search terms matching corresponding fields. The set of frequencies 1438 are processed through a set of decision trees 1246 in the random forest of the supervised model. Each of the decision trees 1246 may be traversed and may vote, based on the set of frequencies 1438, in a manner similar to the decision tree 1300 of FIG. 13. When all of the decision trees 1246 have voted, the votes may be counted and a confidence score 1422 based on a number of counted votes may be output. This process may be repeated for each of the top ranking historical records input to the supervised model. Note that, the supervised model may perform voting for all of the provided top ranking historical records, and then output the scores as a set, and may additionally output, with each score, a user ID and/or historical record ID corresponding to the particular historical record. Note too, that, in some implementations, the supervised model does not utilize decision trees. For example, the supervised model may be implemented as a set of naïve Bayes classifiers, a linear set of decision rules, or as a multinomial logistic regression.

FIG. 15 illustrates an example 1500 of an embodiment of the present disclosure. Specifically, FIG. 15 depicts a payment preference model 1552 that outputs, based on details 1516, a set of scores 1542A-42E reflecting a likelihood that a user associated with the details 1516 will select a particular payment option of the options 1554. The payment preference model 1552 may include a supervised model/random forest for determining the set of scores 1542A-42E. The set of scores may be input to a user interface displaying component 1556 along with a user credit risk 1522 of the user as determined by a risk prediction system 1550, and the user interface displaying component 1556 may output a user interface screen (e.g., a checkout window) according to a set of business rules.

An example operation of the example 1500 would be a case where a user is at a checkout screen of an online merchant, preparing to purchase an expensive component (e.g., television, speakers, 8-track tape player, etc.) for a home theater system. The payment preference model 1552 may determine, based on details such as the expense of the items being purchased, that it is highly likely that the user will want to pay for the purchase in installments, and consequently the score output for that payment option may be the highest. As another example, if the same user purchases a paperback book 15 minutes later, the payment preference model may determine, based on the relative inexpensiveness of the item being purchased compared to the previous purchase, that the user is likely to prefer to pay for the paperback book with a credit card, and consequently the credit card payment option may receive the highest score output by the payment preference model 1552.

The example 1500 assumes that the user identity has already been determined or can be determined from the details 1516 in the manner described in the present disclosure (e.g., process 1700 of FIG. 17). The details 1516 may be information corresponding to a transaction. For example, a user may have selected one or more items for purchase from an online merchant. In such an example, the details 1516 may include information such as identities of the items, quantities of each item, prices of the items, postcode to which the items will be delivered, and so on. The details 1516 may be transformed into one or more variables for use in determining the credit risk of the user and/or potential payment preferences. Examples of such variables may be found in the table below:

TABLE 1 Variable Name Variable Group Description name_in_email Purchase specific Compares the user given and family name to the email estore_group Purchase specific The group in which an e-store is active seconds_since_midnight Purchase specific The number of seconds since midnight activation_amount Purchase specific The total activation amount of the purchase age Purchase specific The user age stds_dev_from_previous_purchases Purchase specific The number of standard deviations that the activation amount is from previous archived purchases tot_debt Purchase specific The user's total amount owed to creditor number_different_products Purchase specific The number of different active products for the user days_since_last_purchase_0_3_months Pre calculated historic The number of days since the last purchase within 3 months activation_amount_last_purchase_0_3_months Pre calculated historic The activation amount of the last purchase within 3 months payment_method_last_purchase_0_3_months Pre calculated historic The payment method of the last purchase within 3 months n_credit_card_0_3_months Pre calculated historic The number of credit card purchases within 3 months n_direct_bank_0_3_months Pre calculated historic The number of direct bank purchases within 3 months n_prepay_0_3_months Pre calculated historic The number of pre-pay purchases within 3 months n_invoice_0_3_months Pre calculated historic The number of invoice purchases within 3 months

The first variable, name_in_email may be a Boolean variable indicating whether the given name and/or family name of the user is found within the email address. If this variable is true, this provides further indication that the email address is associated with the user and vice versa. The random forest of the supervised model may be trained to use this variable in making its determinations. The random forest may be trained on many more variables than those described above; the variables listed above are listed for illustrative purposes. The variable, estore_group, may be a variable for categorizing the items or services being purchased. For example, a cellular phone may belong to an “electronics” estore_group and a pair of shoes may belong to a “clothing” estore_group. The variable, seconds_since_midnight may be used to capture the time of day of the transaction, which may affect preferred payment by the user. For example, some users may not carry their credit card during working hours, and consequently those users may choose to use a different payment type when making purchases during working hours.

The variable, activation_amount may refer to the total cost of the transaction. The variable, tot_debt may refer to the total amount currently owed to a creditor or merchant. The variable, number_different_products, may refer to the quantity of different products being purchased in the transaction. The variable, days_since_last_purchase_0_3_months may refer to the number of days since the most recent purchase in the last three months. The variable, activation_amount last_purchase_0_3_months may refer to the total cost of the most recent purchase within the last three months. The variable, stds_dev_from_previous_purchases may reflect how much the current transaction deviates in cost from previous transactions. The variable, payment method last_purchase_0_3_months may refer to the payment method used in the most recent purchase within the last three months. The variables, n_credit_card_0_3_months, n_direct_bank_0_3_months, n_prepay_0_3_months, and n_invoice_0_3_months may refer to the number of purchases made with credit card, direct bank withdrawal, prepay, and invoice respectively in the last three months. These variables may be variables usable by the random forest of the supervised model.

The risk prediction system 1550 may be a hardware and/or software component configured to perform a risk assessment of the user based on the user identity, past information about the user, and the details 1516. For example, if the user is a new user with no payment history, the risk prediction system 1550 may determine that the risk that the user will default on payment is higher, and consequently the value output in the user credit risk 1522 may reflect this risk. Similarly, if the user had previously purchased only small value items but the purchase in the current transaction associated with the details 1516 is a very expensive purchase, the risk prediction system 1550 may also determine that there is a moderate risk that the user will default on payment, and consequently the user credit risk 1522 may be an output value reflecting this moderate risk. On the other hand, if the user had previously purchased high-value items and fulfilled paying for those items, the risk prediction system 1550 may determine that the user is of low risk of defaulting on payment, especially if the current transaction is of low value, and consequently the user credit risk 1522 may be an output value reflecting this low risk.

The user credit risk 1522 may be a characteristic associated with the user identity that indicates a potential risk of default on payment by the user associated with the details 1516. For example, a user credit risk of 0.4 may be an estimate by the risk prediction system 1550 that the user associated with the details 1516 is 40% likely to default on payment. Similarly, a user credit risk of 0.015 may reflect a confidence in the user (e.g., only 1.5% likely to default). The user credit risk 1522 may be a numerical or string value. The user credit risk 1522 may be computed based on information about previous transactions associated with the user identity.

The options 1554 represent different payment options (also referred to as payment types) that could potentially be made available to the user in a user interface at checkout. A first option may be, “pay in X” (or “PIX” for short), which is an option that allows the user to fulfill the payment obligations within a certain amount of time (e.g., six months, one week, 60 days, etc.). A second option may be a revolving account of credit. A third option may be a “pay after delivery” option. A fourth option may be to pay with a credit card. A fifth option may be to pay directly from a bank account. Note that these payment options are for illustrative use only, and it is contemplated that other types of payment are also within the scope of the present disclosure. Furthermore it is also contemplated that for some merchants or in some regions, some of the options 1554 may be unavailable to the user, in which case they may be omitted from being passed through the payment preference model or may be disregarded by the user interface displaying component 1556.

Each of the options 1554, when processed by the system, cause the system to perform a particular workflow in order to receive funds from the transaction. That is, the system acts as an automatic payment system that receives payment based on the option used. For example, upon selection by the user to pay with credit card, the system may contact the computers associated with the brand of credit card in order to receive funds and ensure that the user is appropriately charged. Likewise, if the customer selected an option from an interface that deducts the appropriate funds from a bank account, the system may contact the user's bank to deduct the funds from the user's bank account. Or, if the customer selected to pay in 14 days, the system may wait to receive payment from the customer for up to 14 days.

The payment preference model 1552 may comprise hardware and/or software that is configured to output/predict a likelihood that the user associated with the details 1516 will select a particular purchase option for the transaction associated with the details 1516. The scores 1542A-42E may be computed by passing a set of inputs, generated based on the details 1516, through a random forest that has been trained on a data set of information about past usage by other users. The inputs may be one or more values for one or more variables, similar to the variables described above (e.g, name_in_email, estore_group, seconds_since_midnight, activation_amount, tot_debt, number_different_products, days_since_last_purchase_0_3_months, activation_amount last_purchase_0_3_months, stds_dev_from_previous_purchases, payment method last_purchase_0_3_months, n_credit_card_0_3_months, n_direct_bank_0_3_months, n_prepay_0_3_months, and n_invoice_0_3_months, etc.).

As noted, the random forest of the supervised model may have been trained from a data set that included at least some of these types of inputs. For example, the training data set for the random forest may have fields for payment type, email address, time of day, total number of different products, debt currently owed by the user to the merchant, amount of the purchase, days since the previous purchase, merchant identity, product identity, day of month, etc. In this manner, the payment preference of the user may be determined based in part on the behaviors of other users in similar situations according to variables similar to those described above. For example, if the user is buying a home theater component at 10:24 PM, and the most recent purchase by the user within the last three months was clothing and the user at that time is selected to pay in part, the payment preference model 1552 may base its determination based on what past users in similar situations preferred (e.g., as determined by the supervised model trained on such data). On the other hand, if the user associated with the details 1516 is known to always pay with credit card, that fact may influence the scores 1542A-42E of the payment preference model. The set of scores 1542A-42E may reflect a probability determined by the supervised model that the user will prefer a particular one of the options 1554.

The user interface displaying component 1556 may be a component of the system configured to determine, based on the set of scores 1542A-42E and the user credit risk 1522, which of the user interfaces 1528A-28C to display to the user associated with the details 1516. The user interfaces 1528A-28C may be web-based or standalone applications having text or graphic controls (e.g., HyperText Markup Language form fields, dropdown boxes, multiselect boxes, radio buttons, checkboxes, images, buttons, hidden fields, textboxes, and other such form elements, etc.) for conducting and/or finalizing a transaction, such as between the user and an online merchant. In some embodiments, the user interfaces are dynamically generated by the user interface displaying component 1556. As an example of a flow, if the user interface displaying component 1556 determines that the user credit risk 1522 is above a certain threshold (e.g., because the user associated with the details 1516 does not have a reliable credit history), the user interface displaying component 1556 may output an interface similar to the user interface 1528A, prompting the user to pay in advance before receiving ordered items.

On the other hand, if the user interface displaying component 1556 determines that, based on the user credit risk 1522, that the user is approved for credit the user interface displaying component 1556 may select from at least a couple of different potential user interfaces to display. For example one option may be to display a user interface 1528B giving the user the option to buy now and decide how to pay later, or another option may be to display a user interface 1528C allowing the user to select how to pay from a number of options (e.g., “invoice,” “revolve,” etc.). The user interface 1528B may present the user with the “buy” that, when clicked, defaults to the payment preference option determined by the payment preference model 1552, however the user interface 1528B may also include a link, button, or other control that can be clicked by the user to cause the user interface 1528C to display in case the user desires to change the type of payment preferred. In some embodiments, the user can click “buy” (or equivalent interface control) to confirm the default payment type and finalize the transaction, and then change the payment type later. One of the purposes of the embodiment illustrated by the example 1500 is to present the user with a checkout screen based on a determination of what the user will prefer. Within the user interface displaying component may be a business rule management system, similar to the business rule management system 1030 of FIG. 10, configured to determine, based on the user credit risk 1522 and the set of scores 1542A-42E, which of the user interfaces 1528A-28C to display.

As an example, if, according to a database of historical records, the user, “Henry Gibson,” always pays with a credit card, the payment preference model 1552 may determine that this user is likely to want to pay with a credit card again, and, consequently, the user interface displaying component 1556 may cause the user interface 1528B to display along with the message to the effect of, “Paying with credit card on file.” Alternatively, the user interface displaying component 1556 may cause the user interface 1528C to display, but the option for “Card” may be preselected. Similarly, based on the scores 1542A-42E, the options may be displayed in an order based on the scores 1542A-42E in the user interface 1528C.

Selection of a particular option or selection to “buy” by the user may cause an automated payment system to respond accordingly (i.e. perform the appropriate workflow). For example, if confirmation of the payment option by the user is received by the user interface, the workflow for that payment option may be caused to be processed. For example if the payment option confirmed was a credit card payment, the system may contact the appropriate systems of the credit card company so that the user is charged for the amount of the purchase so that the merchant can receive funds from the purchase. Likewise, if the payment option confirmed was an invoice payment, the system may generate and send an invoice to the user prompting the user to remit payment upon receipt.

In some embodiments, the user identity determined by the system of the present disclosure is usable to deliver personalized content, such as through a widget embedded in a webpage or through some other interface, to the user. In these embodiments, the content delivered may vary based on the confidence that the system has that the determined identity corresponds to the user. For example, if the system has low confidence (e.g., 30%) that the user is the same as the closest matching user found in historical records and/or the system determines that the user credit risk 1522 is too high (e.g., above a threshold), the system may present a general/less targeted content to the users, such as a weather report for a region associated with the closest matching user or a simple welcome message (e.g., “Welcome to the checkout page!”). On the other hand, if the system has a higher confidence (e.g., 70%) that the user is the same as the closest matching user found in historical records and/or the system determines that the user credit risk 1522 is sufficiently low (e.g., below a threshold), the system may present more targeted content (e.g., “We think you might be interested in our new baseball caps!”). Similarly, if the system has a much higher confidence (e.g., 95%) that the user is the same as the closest matching user and/or the system determines that the user credit risk 1522 is very low (e.g., below still another threshold), the system may present even more specific content (e.g., “You have been preapproved for our credit products!”). In other words, the cutoff value 1150 may be increased or decreased as needed based at least in part on the significance of consequences associated with an incorrect determination of a user identity.

FIG. 16 illustrates an example 1600 in which an embodiment may be practiced. Specifically, FIG. 16 depicts a payment preference model 1652 that receives, as input, the details 1616 about the current transaction in process, and a possible payment option 1654. The payment preference model 1652 utilizes a supervised model 1644 (e.g. a random forest trained to make payment preference predictions) to output a score 1642, based on these inputs and a set of historical records 1618 in a database 1602.

The details 1616 may be a set of field values associated with a current transaction by a user. Some of the field values may be values input by a user into an online form (e.g., given name, family name, postcode, etc.), whereas other field values may be related to a computing device being used to conduct the transaction (e.g., Internet protocol address) or other information related to the transaction (e.g., date, time, etc.). The details 1616 may include information such as price, time of day, item type, quantity, and similar information related to the transaction.

The set of field values may further include information either identifying the user or usable at least in part to determine the identity of the user, similar to the manner described for the process 1700 of FIG. 17. Therefore, based on the set of field values, additional information about the user may be obtained, such as age of the user, email address of the user, whether the given name and/or family name of the user is found within the email address of the user, whether the user owes payment to the merchant for any previous purchases, etc. In this manner, the details 1616 may therefore include information about previous transactions/purchases as may be determined by the record matching service 1014 in business rule management systems 1030 of FIG. 10. Information about previous transactions may be obtained from a data store (not pictured) that stores information about transactions by this and other users. In some cases, this data store may be specific to an online merchant that is a party to the transaction, whereas in other cases the data store may be a central data store for storing transactions between various users and various merchants.

The possible payment option 1654 may be a payment option, similar to the options 1554 of FIG. 15 (e.g., pay-in-X, credit card, direct bank withdrawal, etc.). The database 1602 may be a database for storing the set of historical records 1618 of previous purchase behavior by other users. For example, the set of historical records 1618 may include data about previous purchases by previous users, such as age of the users, times of purchase, prices at the time of purchase, deviations of the purchase price from prices of previous transactions, and so on. The supervised model 1644 may have been trained on similar historical data; that is, the random forest of the supervised model may been generated based on data containing similar types of data collected about previous purchases of users, using the payment options chosen by those users as the ground truth. Consequently, the decision trees of the supervised model 1644 may be configured to cast a vote for the likelihood of any given payment option (e.g., the possible payment option 1654) to be the preferred method of payment by the user associated with the details 1616.

The payment preference model 1652 may comprise one or more hardware and/or software components for scoring payment options based on received details 1616. Such components including the supervised model 1644 in the database 1602. Although not depicted, in some implementations, similar to the supervised model of the record matching service described in reference to other embodiments in the present disclosure, the payment preference model 1652 may include a search component that transforms the details 1616 into search terms. The search terms may be used to perform search queries on the database 1602 to return the set of historical records 1618. In some implementations, the set of historical records 1618 may also be returned with a set of frequencies (not depicted) reflecting how common the search terms are within the database 1602. For example, if name_in_email occurs 60% of the time, a frequency corresponding to that search query may be returned to 0.6. In these implementations, these frequencies may be passed through the random forest in order to obtain scores for each of the set of options without actually passing the details 1616 through the random forest.

The supervised model 1644 may, as noted above, be a random forest trained on a data set of previous purchases by other users. Each record of the data set having at least one field for a ground truth value, one of which being the particular methods of payment preferred by the other users. Thus, when the supervised model 1644 receives the set of details 1616 (or set of inputs determined from the set of details 1616), each decision tree of the supervised model 1644 may vote on whether the set of details 1616 suggests that the associated user will prefer the payment option 1654 as a method of payment. The supervised model 1644 may then output the vote as the score 1642 for the possible payment option 1654. This process may be repeated for each potential payment option, thereby yielding a set of scores, such as the scores 1542 of FIG. 15.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure may be used to determine an ideal balance between price reduction and customer conversion. For example, when a price of a product is lowered, the vendor of the product may make less profit per product sold, but the lower price may attract more buyers, thereby resulting in increased overall profit for the vendor. However, at a certain point, further lowering the price does not attract enough buyers to offset the cost of lowering the price (e.g., if the price is lowered to zero, the vendor ceases to make a profit even if the number of buyers are infinite). This may be true both for tangible goods, credit products (e.g., fees associated with offerings of credit), and services.

The likelihood of consumers purchasing a given product based on its price may be expressed using a logarithmic curve. However, each individual may have their own price points and their own curves. For example, what Henry may pay for a product may be different than what Lars will be willing to pay for the same product, and vice versa. In the present disclosure, is contemplated that details about a purchaser and about the current transaction may be passed through a random forest of a supervised model to output a likelihood that the purchaser will be persuaded to complete the transaction at a given price. For example, details such as an age of the user, number of products in the current transaction, and day of the month may affect the price sensitivity of the user. Therefore, a random forest of the supervised model may be trained on a data set of historical purchases made by other users where a ground truth value for the data set is a Boolean value indicating whether the purchase was completed. In this manner, the best price for a given product for a given user may be determined by passing details about the transaction through the supervised model. For example, passing a name of the product, a price, age of the user, and time of month, each decision tree of a random forest of the supervised model may cast a vote whether the user will complete the purchase. A count of all the votes then may indicate a likelihood that the user will complete the purchase. Note that in some embodiments, the supervised model is alternatively implemented using a regression model based on such historical purchase data instead of a random forest.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure may be used to determine, using a supervised model, the likelihood, based on details associated with the transaction, that a user will return one or more items ordered. For example, a random forest of the supervised model may be trained on historical purchase data where a ground truth is a Boolean value indicating whether a particular purchased product was returned by the purchaser. The data mined for the current transaction in the historical purchase data include be data mined from the text of the item description. Detailed associated with the transaction and in the historical purchase data may be details such as the type of product, the number of similar types of products purchased during the same transaction, sizes of the products, colors of the products, the price of the product, age of the purchaser, day of the month, season of the year, and so on. For example, if the user selects for purchase from an online merchant three pairs of the same type of shoes, but in sizes 6½, 7, and 7½. By passing this information regarding the type and sizes of the products, the supervised model may output a score suggesting that it is very likely that the user will return two of the pairs of shoes. The supervised model, may even suggest that, based on the differences in sizes, that the user will most likely keep the size 7 pair and return the size 6½ and 7½ pairs. Similarly, if the customer orders two sets of curtains that are identical except that they are different colors, the supervised model may determine that the customer is likely to return one of the set of curtains.

Certain returns may be affected by the season of the year. For example, returns for bathing suits may be higher during the summer or fall months then during the winter. Therefore, based on these and other factors, the supervised model may be able to indicate a likelihood that a user will return a particular product purchased. The supervised model may also be able to distinguish that some products may be more likely to be returned than others; for example, if the user orders packs of two different flavors of Ramen noodles, the supervised model may determine that it is unlikely that the user will return either the Ramen noodles.

Based on this prediction, various actions may be performed by the merchant and/or a creditor. For example, if a merchant runs low in stock for a particular item, but the merchant expects, based on the likelihood described above, to be receiving some of the particular items back in a customer return, the merchant may not need to immediately restock the particular item. Furthermore, by avoiding the necessity of restocking the particular item, the merchant may avoid having excess stock on hand when the returned items finally arrived. Another action that may be taken is that a creditor can extend a payment period based on the likelihood that the user will be returning one or more items. For example, if the user was given 14 days to pay in full for a particular order, but the supervised model indicated that it was likely that the user would return one of the items from the particular order, additional time (also referred to as “slack period”) may be given to the user to pay in full (e.g., 14 days extended to 28 days), to allow time for the returned item to be delivered back to the merchant. In this manner, a customer need not be inconvenienced by being billed for an item not kept. Additionally or alternatively, additional credit may be added to the credit limit of the user because it is known that the user is not likely to be charged for the full value of the purchase or because it is known that the user will likely receive a credit from returning an item.

However, if the user orders a large number of items and returns most of them, the profit of the merchant may be reduced (e.g., restocking costs, shipping and handling costs, labor and other costs). Therefore another benefit provided by this embodiment may be that, payment options may be dynamically adjusted based on a likelihood of return. For example, if the user orders 20 dresses, and the supervised model determines that it is likely that the user will return 75% of the dresses, the merchant may demand pre-payment by the user in order to complete the purchase, rather than allowing the user to pay by credit card.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure may be used to predict future purchases by the user. For example, a web application, such as a software widget, embedded into merchant web pages may be configured to collect information about the products the user is viewing through a browser and/or selecting for potential purchase. From this information, a supervised model may be able to determine the likelihood of a purchase of a particular item at a particular price by the particular user. For example, if the software widget as described above is utilized by five different online electronic stores, and detects that the user has viewed 32-inch televisions at each of the sites, the supervised model may detect the pattern and indicate that it is very probable that the user will soon purchase a television in the near future, and probably a 32-inch one. Based on this information, a merchant may configure an online store to offer various incentives to the user upon a return visit to the site by the user. For example, if the user had previously been browsing 32-inch televisions during a previous session, upon revisiting the site, the user may be presented with an offer of 20% off on the purchase of a 32-inch television.

The random forest of the supervised model may be trained on historical purchase data that includes data about previous web pages browsed by an individual prior to a purchase, time period between visiting such web pages and the time of actual purchase, categories of products browsed, category of product purchased, and so on. The data may also include data about webpages browsed by an individual that did not result in a purchase. For example, if an individual browsed multiple product pages for 32-inch televisions within a certain price range, and the individual was not subsequently detected as having purchased a television, at least within a predetermined range of time, this information may be collected and may be usable in conjunction with the supervised model to determine how much to lower a price for a particular product in order to increase conversion of consumers. As noted above, data may be mined from the product description text for training the random forest of the supervised model.

Moreover, benefits of these embodiments further include providing merchants with forecasting data. For example, if the software widget described above detected, based on received browsing data from multiple users, that 100 of those users are likely to purchase a 32-inch television within the next week from a particular merchant, the merchant can be notified by the system of the present disclosure, so as to be prepared to have 100 32-inch televisions on hand in preparation for the purchases. In some embodiments, an advantage is that the widget may be utilized by multiple merchants in their webpages in order to take advantage of cross-merchant browsing by potential customers.

Some embodiments of the present disclosure may be used to predict non-completion of purchases, which may provide an opportunity to a merchant to make an adjustment to an offer as an incentive to a prospective purchaser to complete the transaction. In these embodiments, a random forest of a supervised model may be trained on data collected at checkout for an online purchase. The ground truth value for the random forest may be whether the purchase was completed or not. Thus, based on data collected at checkout, such as total price, number of items, types of items, last date of a previous purchase by the user, payment type used for the previous purchase by the user, browser type, device type being used for the purchase (e.g., mobile phone, personal computer, etc.), Internet protocol address, time of day, day of month, and so on, the supervised model may predict whether the user is likely to complete the purchase or abandon the purchase. In a case where the supervised model indicates that it is likely that the user will abandon the purchase, or abandon at least a portion of the purchase (e.g., removing certain items from the shopping cart), the system may be configured to present the user with incentives deemed likely to persuade the user to complete the purchase (e.g., six month grace period to pay for the purchase, low interest terms, discount on next purchase, etc.).

Some embodiments of the present disclosure may be used to predict whether additional security or authentication information should be obtained from the user (e.g., via 3-D Secure protocol) prior to completing the purchase. That is, based on data collected, a supervised model may determine a likelihood of fraud in the transaction, and, as a result, determine whether to prompt the user for further assurances (e.g., Social Security number, challenge response authentication, etc.). In some cases, the supervised model may aid in determining whether, based on a given likelihood of risk of fraud, whether the user is likely to be discouraged from completing the transaction if prompted for further assurances. That is, the merchant may determine that it is worth the risk, up to a threshold of likelihood, to proceed with the transaction without further assurances if the likelihood that further assurances would cause the user to abandon the transaction is too high (e.g., above another threshold).

FIG. 17 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a process 1700 for determining the likelihood that a user placing a record is associated with a historical record in accordance with various embodiments. Some or all of the process 1700 (or any other processes described, or variations and/or combinations of those processes) may be performed under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions and/or other data, and may be implemented as executable instructions executing collectively on one or more processors. The executable instructions and/or other data may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a computer program persistently stored on magnetic, optical, or flash media).

Some or all of process 1700 may be performed, for example, by any suitable system such as the computing device 2000 described in conjunction with FIG. 20. The process 1700 includes a series of operations wherein a request is received to determine the identity of a user, the data provided in the request is transformed into a set of search terms, a frequency value is generated for each of the search terms, and a set of historical records is determined based in part on the frequency value. The set of historical records is run through a supervised model of the present disclosure, and an output set of user identities (IDs).

In 1702, the system performing the process 1700 receives an electronic request to validate the user identity associated with the set of details. In some examples, “electronic request” may refer to a request initiated by a computer system or component of the computer system to another computer system or component of the other computer system. Examples of electronic requests include application programming interface calls and remote procedure calls. At least a portion of the set of details may be included with the electronic request, which may be submitted to the system through an application programming interface. As noted, details may include details about user and/or a record in the process of being placed, such as given/first name (e.g., “John,” “Henry,” “Lars,” “Erik,” etc.), family/last name (e.g., “McClane,” “Gibson,” “Jansson,” “Knutsson,” etc.), billing or delivery address parts (e.g., street number, street name, city name, apartment/flat number, etc.), email address, telephone number, Internet protocol address, and birthdate. In embodiments of the system of the present disclosure, one or more of the details are indexed for more efficient searching. In addition, combinations of one or more of the details may also be indexed. For example, an address combination (e.g., a combination of the first three letters in a street address, a house number, and a postcode), a birthdate and given name combination (e.g., “1976-11-19henry,” etc.), and/or a birthdate and family name combination (e.g., “1976-11-19gibson,” and given/family name combination (e.g., “henrygibson,” etc.) may be indexed additionally or alternatively.

Note that, although the present disclosure describes using details to identify a user who is a customer of an online merchant, the techniques described in the present disclosure may also be used to identify a user in other contexts. For example, rather than details, the electronic request may include the text/content of an article (i.e., piece of writing). The techniques of the present disclosure may be utilized to determine the probability that the article was written by the same author as another article indexed and stored in the system database. Or, as still another example, the techniques of the present disclosure may be utilized to determine the probability that a person signing up for a particular service (e.g., social media service, email service, etc.) has the same identity as an identity associated with other details stored in the database, based on input provided via a validation request of 1702.

In 1704, the values provided in the request parameters may be transformed into search queries. Values for some of the request parameters may be transformed into only a single search query; for example, a postcode of “90210” may only be transformed into a search for postcode that matches “90210.” However other request parameters may be transformed into multiple search queries; for example, a given name may be transformed into a query for the given name and another query for the first three letters of the given name (e.g., “Katherine” and “kat”). As another example, a given name and a family name may be transformed into queries for the given name, the family name, combination of the given name and the family name (i.e., given name first), and a combination of the family name and the given name (i.e., family name first). As still another example, a hyphenated given name and/or family name may be split into multiple queries (e.g., “John-Henry” transformed into separate given name queries for “John” and “Henry,” “Spencer-Churchill” transformed into separate family name queries for “Spencer” and “Churchill”).

Also in 1704, the values provided in the request parameters may be normalized in the search queries. For example, text may be converted into all upper or lower case, white space may be removed (e.g., all white space, leading or trailing white space, etc.), certain character types may be removed (e.g., nonnumeric characters may be removed from a telephone number, non-alpha characters may be removed from a given name or family name, etc.), or Internet protocol address may be normalized to a canonical format.

In 1706, a set of records in the data set (e.g., historical records from users) matching any of the search queries may be obtained. In the above example, for “Kelly Taylor” residing in postcode “90210,” the set of records may include all records matching the given name “Kelly,” all records matching the family name “Taylor,” and all records matching the postcode “90210.” In this example, the total count of records may be determined to be 250,000 (e.g., some of the records may overlap).

In 1708, for each of the set of records determined in 1706, a term frequency is computed for each of the search queries determined in 1704. Term frequency may refer to a number of occurrences of a search term within a particular search field. In the present disclosure, however, terms are typically found within a particular search field only once or not at all. For example, for a given record, the given name field will either match the given name search query (e.g., “john”), in which case the term frequency for the given document will be 1 for the given name search query, or it will not match, in which case the term frequency for the given document will be 0 for the given name search query.

In 1710, an inverse document frequency (IDF) value may be computed for each of the search terms. The IDF is based on the premise that, the rarer the match, the greater the probability that the record is associated with the user being validated. IDF values may be computed in a number of ways, one of which may be according to one of the following formulas. In a case where the term matched within a record, the IDF value may be computed as:

$\mspace{20mu} {{{IDF}({term})} = {\log_{2}\frac{{total\_ number}{\_ of}{\_ records}}{1 + {{number\_ of}{\_ occurrences}({term})}}\mspace{14mu} {or}}}$ 1  if  number_of_occurences(term) + 2 > total_number_of_records

In a case where the term is not found (i.e., not matched) within a record, the IDF value may be computed as:

${{IDF}({term})} = {{- \log_{2}}\frac{{total\_ number}{\_ of}{\_ records}}{{{total\_ number}{\_ of}{\_ records}} - {{number\_ of}{\_ occurrences}({term})}}}$ or   − 1  if  number_of_occurences(term) + 2 > total_number_of_records

In a case where the term is not provided or missing from the details (e.g., a “middle name” field was left blank by the user or otherwise not provided to the record matching service):

IDF(term)=0

The frequency in these cases refers to a count of records that match the respective term in the search of the data set. For example, a query may be generated to obtain a count of records where the given name field matches “john,” in a data set containing 1 million records of user information. Such a query may return a result count of 32,716. Whereas, a query to obtain a count of records where the given name matches “Darrell,” in the data set, may return a result count of 1480, indicating that “John” is a much more common name than “Darrell.” As another example, a set of details may include a given name of “Kelly,” a family name of “Taylor,” and a postcode of 90210. From a data set of 35 million user records, a given name count of 60,550 records matching given name, “Kelly,” may be obtained, a family name count of 108,850 records matching the family name, “Taylor,” may be obtained, and a postcode count of 185,864 records matching the postcode, 90210.

In the above examples, IDF_(GivenName)(“john”)=1.485 and IDF_(GivenName)(“darrell”)=3.107, reflecting that the uniqueness of the given name “Darrell” is greater than “John.” The inverse document frequency value may be usable for determining the likelihood that the user associated with the current details is associated with one or more of the matching records. In the example above for “Kelly Taylor,” IDF_(GivenName)(“kelly”)=9.175, IDF_(FamilyName)(“taylor”)=8.329, and IDF_(Postcode)(90210)=7.557.

In 1712, for each of the records that contains at least one occurrence that matches a search query, a rank may be determined based on rank calculation. Various permutations of ranking are possible. In one example, the rank calculation for each document may be the sum of the term frequencies (i.e., 1 or 0) in the document multiplied by the IDF for the term:

${S({record})} = {\sum\limits_{term}{{match\_ in}\; \left( {{record},{term}} \right) \times {{IDF}({term})}}}$

Where match_in(record, term) is 1 if the search query finds the term in the respective field of the record, is −1 if the search query does not find the term in the respective field of the record, and 0 if the search term is blank or was not provided in the details. Using the above IDF's as an example, a record with the given name field matching “kelly” and a family name field matching “taylor,” but not matching a postcode field of “90210,” would yield a rank calculation of 9.947 (1×9.175+1×8.329+−1×7.557). A record with the family name field matching “taylor” and the postcode field matching “90210,” but the given name field was left blank, would yield a rank calculation of 15.886 (0×9.175+1×8.329+1×7.557). Whereas, a record with the given name field matching “Kelly,” the family name field matching “taylor,” and the postcode field matching “90210,” would yield a rank calculation of 25.061 (1×9.175+1×8.329+1×7.557). These rank calculations may be used to rank and filter out records that are unlikely to be associated with the user. For example, out of all of the records that contain at least one occurrence matching a search query, only a threshold number (e.g., 30, 100, 5, etc.) of the highest ranking records may be retained and passed to the supervised model.

Thus, in 1714, for each of the highest ranking records, a user ID associated with the record and the IDF's for each of the fields may be passed to the supervised model, which may then generate a score for each of the highest ranked records reflecting the likelihood that the user is associated. As noted, the supervised model may be a random forest derived from a reference data set with records having at least some fields of the same type (e.g., given name, family name, address, phone number, etc.) as the fields in the set of records searched above. In some cases, the set of records searched may include the reference data set that was used to generate the supervised model. Each of the records in the reference data set may have at least one ground truth value. In the context of the present disclosure, the ground truth value is a value that, absent malicious or inadvertent use of the value (e.g., identity theft), uniquely or otherwise unambiguously corresponds to a target value/objective, which, in many embodiments of the present disclosure, is an identity of the user. For example, in some countries, each citizen is allocated a unique identification number (e.g., a Social Security number in the United States and Switzerland, the Nigerian National Identification Number in Nigeria, the Population Identification Code in Thailand, etc.). Such a unique information value may serve as ground truth in a data set for identifying a user. Note, in some cases it may be possible for multiple ground truth values to correspond to a single target. For example, if a user holds both a social security number from the United States and a social insurance number from Canada, both numbers may be considered ground truth values because they unambiguously identify the individual to whom they are assigned. Thus, the random forest of the supervised model may be generated (“trained”) from such a data set (also referred to as a “training” data set) in a manner such that, given a set of matching and/or mismatching details, a likelihood of whether the details correspond to a ground truth can be determined. For example, the process generating the random forest may determine that the combination of a given name and a family name is a much more likely predictor of ground truth than the given name and the family name alone.

Furthermore, the process that generates the random forest may determine, based on training data, that an email address is even a more likely predictor of ground truth than the combination of given name and family name. Consequently, the score generated by the supervised model for each of the records may reflect the likelihood that the record is associated with the user that entered the current set of details based at least in part on the one or more fields matched and/or mismatched. More detail regarding the supervised model may be found in the description of FIG. 10. By training the supervised model on a data set with a ground truth value for a user identity as well as other details about the user corresponding to the user identity, the supervised model can be configured to determine whether a user corresponds to a set of details in a data set that lacks a ground truth value, such as a data set of historical records.

Finally, in 1716, the system performing the process 1700 may provide one or more user identifiers associated with the records that scored the highest number of votes by the supervised model as output in response to the electronic request for validation of 1702. Note that in some implementations, rather than a user identifier the system provides a record identifier corresponding to the top scoring record. In still other implementations, the system provides additional data, such as a confidence score indicating the confidence the supervised model has that the user associated with the details is the same user associated with the respective record or user identifier.

For example, a user may enter details and, based on the details, the supervised model may give a confidence score reflecting a 40% confidence that the user is the same user as a particular existing user. Because 40% confidence suggests that it is 60% likely that the user is not the same, the system performing the process 1700 may conclude that the safest course of action is to treat the user as a new user and assign a new user identifier to the user. Note that one or more of the operations performed in 1702-16 may be performed in various orders and combinations, including in parallel.

FIG. 18 is a flow chart illustrating an example of a process 1800 for determining a user payment preference in accordance with various embodiments. Some or all of the process 1800 (or any other processes described, or variations and/or combinations of those processes) may be performed under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions and/or other data, and may be implemented as executable instructions executing collectively on one or more processors. The executable instructions and/or other data may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a computer program persistently stored on magnetic, optical, or flash media). Some or all of process 1800 may be performed, for example, by any suitable system such as the computing device 2000 of FIG. 20. The process 1800 includes a series of operations wherein a set of details are received, user identity is determined based on the set of details, a credit risk is determined based on the user identity, a determination of credit is made, payment options are scored, and the user interface is presented to the user based on the scored payment options if the user is deemed creditworthy.

In 1802, a set of details may be received by the system performing the process 1800. As described, the set of details may correspond to a transaction between a user and a merchant, and may include such details as the user's given name, the user's family name, postcode, email address, Internet protocol address of a computing device being used in the transaction, and a timestamp.

In 1804, based on the information in the set of details, an identity of the user may be determined, such as by a process similar to the process 1700 of FIG. 17. Based on the user's identity, information about previous purchases by the user may be obtained from for example a merchant database configured to store information about purchases. Information about previous purchases may include, a date of the most recent purchase within the last three months, whether the most recent purchase within the last three months has been fully paid for, payment method used in the most recent purchase within the last three months, total amount of purchase of the most recent purchase within last three months, standard deviation of previous purchase prices, and other information based on previous transactions.

In 1806, one or more user characteristics may be computed based upon information received or obtained in 1802-04. One of the characteristics may be a credit risk of the user; that is, a value that corresponds to a likelihood that the user may default on payment for the purchase. For example, if the user is a new customer of the merchant the user may have insufficient payment history to support consideration of the customer as a low credit risk. Consequently, a new customer may be given a high credit risk value. Likewise, an existing customer who has previously defaulted on payment may likewise be given a high credit risk value. On the other hand, an existing customer with an extensive credit history of making good on payments for purchases may be given a low credit risk value, indicating that such customer is unlikely to default on payment.

In 1808, if the user's credit risk is deemed too high (e.g., the credit risk value exceeds a threshold), the user may be presented with a user interface on checkout, in 1810, informing the user that pre-payment for the purchase is necessary before the transaction can be completed. Otherwise, the system performing the process 1800 may proceed to 1812 whereupon, for each of a set of possible payment types/options, the system may compute a score reflecting a likelihood that the user will prefer that payment type. The score may be calculated based at least on inputs derived from the set of details (including information about previous purchases). The score may be calculated by passing the inputs to decision trees of a random forest of the supervised model that has been trained on data from previous purchases by various users, and counting the votes of the decision trees. As noted, the training data used to train the supervised model in this embodiment may include one or more ground truth values for each record, at least one of which corresponding to the payment type selected by the particular users of the previous purchases. In other words, a ground truth value for payment type uniquely or otherwise unambiguously corresponds to the payment type used/selected for the transaction. Note too, that, in some implementations, the supervised model does not utilize decision trees. For example, the supervised model may be implemented as a set of naïve Bayes classifiers, a linear set of decision rules, or as a multinomial logistic regression.

In 1814, the user interface may be determined, based on the set of scores computed for the set of payment options. In some implementations, the user interface may be a user interface selected from a plurality of different user interfaces. In other implementations, the user interface may be dynamically generated. For example, given a set of five different payment options, the payment options may be presented to the user in the user interface in an order (e.g., decreasing, increasing, etc.) corresponding to the scores, and the highest scoring payment option may be selected by default.

Finally, in 1816, the system performing the process 1800 may provide the user interface determined in 1814 to the user (e.g., at checkout). Upon selection or confirmation of a payment options displayed in the user interface, the system performing the process 1800 may initiate the workflow that corresponds to the selected/confirmed payment option. Note that one or more of the operations performed in 1802-16 may be performed in various orders and combinations, including in parallel.

FIG. 19 is a flow chart illustrating an example of a process 1900 for determining the likelihood of return of a purchase by a user in accordance with various embodiments. Some or all of the process 1900 (or any other processes described, or variations and/or combinations of those processes) may be performed under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions and/or other data, and may be implemented as executable instructions executing collectively on one or more processors. The executable instructions and/or other data may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (e.g., a computer program persistently stored on magnetic, optical, or flash media). Some or all of process 1900 may be performed, for example, by any suitable system such as the computing device 2000 of FIG. 20. The process 1900 includes a series of operations wherein details of the potential purchase are received, and based on the details a determination is made as to the likelihood that the user will return one or more items in the potential purchase after the purchase is finalized.

In 1902, details from potential purchase may be received by the system performing the process 1900. For example, the user may be browsing an online store of the merchant, and may have selected one or more items for purchase, causing the items to be placed into a virtual shopping cart/basket. At the time the operations in 1902 are performed, the user may have clicked a button to proceed to a checkout stage of the transaction. However, it is contemplated that the process 1900 may be performed at various other stages during the online shopping experience; such as after the purchase is finalized or each time the user adds a new item to the virtual shopping cart/basket. Details received by the system of the process 1900 may include information such as, for each item in the virtual shopping cart/basket, item type, item description, item color, item size, quantity of item, item price, and so on. Other details received by the system may include information such as Internet protocol address of the user device being used by the user to conduct the transaction, date, and/or time of day. Still other details received by the system may be details about the user and/or previous purchases made by the user (which may be obtained in a manner similar to obtaining information from historical orders described elsewhere in the present disclosure), such as date of previous purchase, amount still owed by user for the previous purchase, return history of the user (e.g., whether the user is known to frequently, that is above a certain threshold, return purchased items), payment type used for previous purchases, payment type being used for the current purchase, locality of the user, and so on.

In 1904, the first item in the shopping cart/basket of the user may be examined (or, if the system performing the process 1900 is returning from 1912, the next item in the shopping cart/basket). In 1906, details regarding the user (e.g., age, gender, etc.), the current item (e.g., price, color, size, etc.), other items (e.g., quantity of other items, prices of other items, sizes/colors of other items, style/model of other items, etc.) in the shopping cart/basket, and other details about the transaction (e.g., date/time, etc.) may be passed to a supervised model trained on similar data. The similar data from which the supervised model was trained may have been a historical data set containing records of previous purchases by various users, whether those users returned items, and, if so, which items were returned.

The supervised model may return a result that indicates a likelihood that the item will be returned. For example a result of 0.6 may suggest that there is a 60% likelihood that the user will return the item. Consequently, in 1908, if a result received from the supervised model indicates a sufficient likelihood (e.g., above a predetermined threshold, such as 75%) that the item will be returned, the system performing the process 1900 may proceed to 1910, whereupon the system may perform an appropriate action as a result.

An appropriate action may include notifying the merchant of the likely return, thereby allowing the merchant to manage inventory accordingly (e.g., if the merchant sells out of the particular item, the merchant may expect to receive another item into stock from the return). Another appropriate action may be to change, add, or remove a promotion for the transaction. For example, if the item is deemed by the supervised model to be likely (e.g., above a threshold) to be returned, a free shipping promotion may be canceled for the transaction, or the user may be encouraged to add an additional item to the transaction that is less likely to be returned. Still another appropriate action may be to present the user with different payment options then may have otherwise been presented had the risk of return been less likely, with the different payment options being better able to mitigate the extra cost of managing the return. For example, the user may be prompted to prepay for the order, or the user may be presented with an offer to insure the shipment of the item for a fee.

Yet another appropriate action may include adjusting a payment period for the purchase. For example, if the user selected a payment type whereby the customer would pay in full after 14 days, the payment due date may be extended to 28 days to account for a delay in payment due to the likely return. That is, rather than receiving a notification by the merchant on the 15^(th) day requesting payment, the merchant may delay its demand until the 29^(th) day. Even another appropriate action may include the creditor temporarily increasing the credit limit of the user. For example, if the user purchases $5,000 worth of goods and is determined likely to return $1,000 worth of goods from that purchase, the creditor may increase the credit limit of the user by $1,000 in order to not penalize the user for goods which are likely in transit for return back to the merchant.

Otherwise, if the supervised model does not indicate sufficient likelihood of a return of the item, the system performing the process 1900 may instead proceed to 1912, whereupon the system may determine whether the current item being examined is the last item in the user's virtual shopping cart/basket. If not, the system may return to 1904 to examine the next item in the user's virtual shopping cart/basket. If so, the system may proceed to 1914, whereupon the transaction may be finalized (e.g., payment processed, confirmation email sent to user, bill of material generated and sent to merchant for processing, etc.).

Note that it is contemplated that rather than iterating through each item in a user's virtual shopping cart/basket, the supervised model may be configured to evaluate the potential purchase as a whole to determine whether at least a portion of the purchase is likely to be returned by the user rather than an item-by-item determination. Note too that, unless otherwise specified, use of expressions regarding executable instructions (also referred to as code, applications, agents, etc.) performing operations that instructions do not ordinarily perform unaided (e.g., transmission of data, calculations, etc.) in the context of describing disclosed embodiments denote that the instructions are being executed by a machine, thereby causing the machine to perform the specified operations.

Embodiments of the disclosure can be described in view of the following clauses:

-   -   1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:     -   receiving an electronic request to determine a user identity,         the electronic request including a set of values for a         corresponding set of fields;     -   transforming the set of values into a set of search terms;     -   computing a set of inverse document frequencies for the set of         search terms based at least in part on a number of records in a         data set of historical records;     -   determining a set of historical records matching at least one         term of the set of terms;     -   for each historical record of the set of matching historical         records, computing a set of search term results, each search         term result of the set of search term results at least         indicating whether:         -   a search term corresponding to the search term result             matches a corresponding field value in the set of matching             historical records;         -   the search term corresponds to an empty value in the set of             values; or         -   the search term is a mismatch to the corresponding field             value; and     -   filtering, based at least in part on the set of inverse document         frequencies and the set of search term results, the set of         historical records to obtain a subset of the set of historical         records;     -   passing inverse document frequencies of the subset of the set of         historical records through a random forest to obtain a set of         confidence scores, each confidence score of the set of         confidence scores corresponding to a historical record of the         subset of the set of historical records;     -   determining a user identity associated with a historical record         based at least in part on the set of confidence scores; and     -   providing the user identity in response to the electronic         request.     -   2. The computer-implemented method of clause 1, wherein:     -   the user identity is of a set of user identities provided with a         set of corresponding confidence scores in response to the         electronic request; and     -   the user identity is determined based at least in part on a         cutoff value, wherein the cutoff value indicates a minimum         confidence score required for the determination.     -   3. The computer-implemented method of clause 1 or 2, further         comprising providing content based at least in part on a         confidence score associated with the user identity.     -   4. The computer-implemented method of clause 1 to 3, wherein:     -   the random forest has been trained from a data set with at least         one field for a ground truth value that identifies an individual         as a result of being unambiguously associated with the         individual; and     -   the set of values does not include a ground truth value for the         user identity.     -   5. A system, comprising:     -   one or more processors; and     -   memory including instructions that, when executed by the one or         more processors, cause the system to:         -   receive an electronic request to determine, based at least             in part on a set of details, an identity of a user;         -   determine a set of frequencies for the set of details;         -   obtain a set of records based at least in part on the set of             details;         -   obtain a set of scores for at least a subset of the set of             records, the set of scores obtained by, for each record of             the set of records, causing the system to:             -   traverse a plurality of decision trees, the plurality of                 decision trees configured to result in a plurality of                 votes based at least in part on one or more frequencies                 of the set of frequencies that are associated with the                 record; and             -   generate the score based at least in part on a count of                 the plurality of votes of the plurality of decision                 trees; and         -   determine the identity based at least in part on the set of             scores.     -   6. The system of clause 5, wherein the one or more frequencies         include one or more inverse document frequencies corresponding         to how uncommon it is that details of the set of details are         found in a particular data set.     -   7. The system of clause 5 or 6, wherein for each frequency of         the set of frequencies, determine the frequency based at least         in part on a function of:     -   a total number of records in a data set that includes the set of         records; and     -   a number of records found in which a search term occurs in a         particular field, the search term generated at least in part         from the set of details.     -   8. The system of clause 7, wherein the function is a logarithmic         function.     -   9. The system of any of clauses 5 to 8, wherein the plurality of         decision trees is a decision tree in a random forest of decision         trees.     -   10. The system of clause 9, wherein a training data set for the         random forest has values for a plurality of fields, wherein at         least one field of the plurality of fields is a source of ground         truth for an identity of a user.     -   11. The system of any of clauses 5 to 10, wherein the         instructions further include instructions that cause the system         to:     -   calculate a rank for each record of the set of records based at         least in part on a one or more frequency values associated with         field values in the record; and     -   select the at least a subset of the set of records based at         least in part on the calculated rank of each of the set of         records.     -   12. The system of clause 11, wherein the instructions that cause         the system to calculate a rank, include instructions that cause         the system to:     -   increase the rank of a record if a search term based at least in         part on the set of details is found in a particular field of the         record; and     -   decrease the rank of the record if the search term is not found         in the particular field.     -   13. The system of clause 11, wherein the at least a subset of         the set of records is a predetermined number of records having         higher calculated ranks than other records in the set of         records.     -   14. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having         stored thereon executable instructions that, when executed by         one or more processors of a computer system, cause the computer         system to at least:     -   receive information consequent to communication between a user         and the computer system;     -   perform one or more queries based at least in part on the         information;     -   compute a set of frequency values for results of the one or more         queries;     -   determine at least one confidence score for the one or more         queries based at least in part on an outcome of evaluating the         set of frequency values against sets of decision rules; and     -   based at least in part on the at least one confidence score,         output at least one user identity associated with the at least         one confidence score.     -   15. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of         clause 14, wherein the instructions that cause the computer         system to perform the one or more queries include instructions         that cause the computer system to:     -   transform the information into a set of normalized search terms;         and     -   obtaining a set of records based at least in part on the set of         normalized search terms, wherein individual records of the set         of records include at least one field value that matches a         search term from the set of normalized search terms.     -   16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of         clause 14 or 15, wherein the one or more queries include one or         more of a query for a match of a predetermined number of first         characters in a particular data field or a match of a         concatenation of values from at least two particular search         fields.     -   17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of any         of clauses 14 to 16, wherein the one or more queries are         performed on a set of records, wherein the set of records are         indexed by one or more of email address, phone number, given         name, family name, combination of given name and family name,         address, and postcode.     -   18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of any         of clauses 14 to 17, wherein individual frequency values of the         set of frequency values indicate how common corresponding         queries are matched to values in fields of in a particular data         set.     -   19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of any         of clauses 14 to 18, wherein the sets of decision rules         correspond to decision trees in a random forest that has been         generated based at least in part on a data set associated with a         population of individuals.     -   20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of         clause 19, wherein the data set associated with the population         of individuals has a field corresponding to a ground truth value         for a user identity and the one or more queries are performed on         a data set that lacks ground truth data.     -   21. A computer-implemented method, comprising:     -   receiving a set of field values corresponding to a transaction;     -   determining, based at least in part on the set of field values,         identifying information about a user associated with the         transaction;     -   obtaining previous transaction information relating to at least         one previous transaction to which the user was a party;     -   computing, based at least in part on the identifying information         and the previous transaction information, a user characteristic         associated with the user;     -   generating a set of inputs based at least in part on the         identifying information and the previous transaction         information;     -   obtaining a set of payment types for an automated payment         system, each payment type of the set corresponding to a workflow         for completion of the transaction by the automated payment         system;     -   computing a score for each payment type of the set of payment         types by passing the set of inputs through a random forest,         thereby obtaining a set of scores for the set of payment types,         the random forest is trained from a data set comprising records         that include at least one field for a ground truth value that         corresponds to a payment type from the set of payment types;     -   selecting, a user interface based at least in part on the set of         payment types, the set of scores, and the user characteristic;         and     -   providing the user interface to the user such that a selection         from user interface by the user causes the one or more computer         systems to perform the workflow corresponding to the payment         type associated with the selection.     -   22. The computer-implemented method of clause 21, wherein the         user characteristic is a risk score indicating a risk of payment         default by the user.     -   23. The computer-implemented method of clause 21 or 22, further         comprising providing content based at least in part on the user         characteristic to the user via the user interface.     -   24. The computer-implemented method of clause 21 to 23, wherein         determining identifying information about the user includes         determining an identity of the user based at least in part on         passing frequency values through a random forest trained from a         data set with at least one field for a ground truth value that         identifies an individual, wherein the frequency values are         associated with frequencies of occurrence of the set of field         values within a set of historical records.     -   25. A system, comprising:     -   one or more processors; and     -   memory including instructions that, when executed by the one or         more processors, cause the system to:         -   receive an electronic request to predict a preferred payment             type for a user, the electronic request including a set of             values associated with an uncompleted transaction;         -   obtain information relating to at least one previous             transaction to which the user was a party based at least in             part on the set of values;         -   obtain a set of payment types, each payment type of the set             corresponding to a different computer-implemented process             for completing the uncompleted transaction;         -   compute a score, based at least in part on the information             and the set of values, for each payment type of the set of             payment types to obtain a set of scores;         -   determine the preferred payment type from the set of payment             types based at least in part on the set of scores; and         -   provide an interface that presents the preferred payment             type to the user and enables the user to complete the             uncompleted transaction according to a computer-implemented             process corresponding to the preferred payment type.     -   26. The system of clause 25, wherein the instructions that cause         the system to compute the score, include instructions that cause         the system to transform the set of values and the information         into values for a set of variables, wherein the set of variables         include one or more variables for:     -   indicating whether a name of the user is found within an email         address of the user,     -   a category for products or services being transacted,     -   a time of day of the transaction,     -   a total cost of the transaction,     -   a total amount of debt by the user, or     -   a quantity of different products being purchased in the         transaction.     -   27. The system of clause 25 or 26, wherein the instructions that         cause the system to obtain the information relating to the at         least one previous transaction, further include instructions         that cause the system to:     -   determine an identity of the user by passing a set of inputs         through a random forest trained on a data set associated with a         population of individuals, the set of inputs based at least in         part on the set of values; and     -   obtaining the information relating to the at least one previous         transaction at least in part from a set of historical records         associated with the identity.     -   28. The system of any of clauses 25 to 27, wherein the         instructions further include instructions that cause the system         to:     -   compute a risk value associated with the user based at least in         part on the set of values; and     -   the instructions that determine the preferred payment type         include instructions that determine the preferred payment type         further based at least in part on the risk value.     -   29. The system of any of clauses 25 to 28, wherein the         instructions that compute a score include instructions that         cause the system to evaluate a plurality of decision trees         configured to arrive at a decision whether a particular payment         type will be preferred by the user based at least in part on the         information and set of values.     -   30. The system of clause 29, wherein the plurality of decision         trees are decision trees in a random forest.     -   31. The system of clause 30, wherein a training data set for the         random forest has values for a plurality of fields, wherein at         least one of the plurality of fields is a source of ground truth         for a payment type.     -   32. The system of any of clauses 30 or 31, wherein the score is         a count of votes of the decision trees in the random forest.     -   33. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having         stored thereon executable instructions that, when executed by         one or more processors of a computer system, cause the computer         system to at least:     -   receive information corresponding to a prospective transaction         by a user;     -   compute a characteristic value for the user based at least in         part on the information;     -   generate a score for at least one payment type based at least in         part on the information and historical data about previous         transactions, the at least one payment type corresponding to at         least one computer-executed workflow for finalizing the         prospective transaction;     -   determine, based at least in part on the score and the         characteristic value, an interface to display to the user, the         interface including functionality that enables the user to         initiate execution of the at least one computer-executed         workflow; and     -   provide the interface to the user.     -   34. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of         clause 33, wherein the characteristic value is a value         reflecting a risk that the user will default on payment for the         prospective transaction.     -   35. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of         clause 33 or 34, wherein the historical data about previous         transactions is obtained by:     -   determining an identity associated with the user based at least         in part on at least one confidence score computed by evaluating,         through one or more sets of decision rules, one or more         frequency values associated with the information; and     -   obtaining a set of historical records associated with the         identity.     -   36. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of any         of clauses 33 to 35, wherein:     -   the interface is a web interface for finalizing the transaction         at checkout;     -   the web interface includes a graphical control for confirming         the at least one payment type; and     -   upon confirmation of the at least one payment type by the user         via the graphical control, the web interface causes execution of         the at least one computer-executed workflow to be initiated.     -   37. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of any         of clauses 33 to 36, wherein the instructions that cause the         computer system to generate the score for the at least one         payment type based at least in part on the historical data         include instructions that cause the computer system to:     -   transform the historical data into values for a set of variables         and generate the score based at least in part on the values for         the set of variables, wherein the set of variables include one         or more variables for:         -   a date of a most recent purchase by the user,         -   a total cost of the most recent purchase by the user,         -   a deviation of a cost of the transaction from costs of             previous transactions by the user,         -   a payment method used in the most recent purchase by the             user, or     -   a number of purchases made by the user using the at least one         payment type within a predetermined time period prior to the         transaction.     -   38. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of any         of clauses 33 to 37, wherein:     -   the user is a first user; and     -   the historical data is obtained from one or more historical         records associated with a second user, wherein the second user         is determined to be the first user based at least in part on a         confidence score exceeding a minimum confidence score.     -   39. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of any         of clauses 33 to 38, wherein the instructions that generate the         score for the at least one payment type include instructions         that cause the computer system to:     -   determine values for a set of input variables based on the         information and the historical data;     -   for each payment type of the at least one payment type, cast one         or more votes for the payment type based at least in part on an         evaluation of the values of the set of input variables; and     -   generate the score based at least in part on a count of votes         for the at least one payment type.     -   40. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of         clause 39, wherein the evaluation of the values is performed by         traversing decision trees of a random forest.

FIG. 20 is an illustrative, simplified block diagram of an example of a computing device 2000 that may be used to practice at least one embodiment of the present disclosure. In various embodiments, the computing device 2000 may be used to implement any of the systems illustrated herein and described above. For example, the computing device 2000 may be configured for use as a data server, a web server, a portable computing device, a personal computer, or any electronic computing device. As shown in FIG. 20, the computing device 2000 may include one or more processors 2002 that may be configured to communicate with, and are operatively coupled to, a number of peripheral subsystems via a bus subsystem 2004. The processors 2002 may be utilized for the traversal of decision trees in random forest of supervised models in embodiments of the present disclosure (e.g., cause the evaluation of inverse document frequencies of various search terms, etc.). These peripheral subsystems may include a storage subsystem 2006, comprising a memory subsystem 2008 and a file/disk storage subsystem 2010, one or more user interface input devices 2012, one or more user interface output devices 2014, and a network interface subsystem 2016. Such a storage subsystem 2006 may be used for temporary or long-term storage of information such as details associated with transactions described in the present disclosure, databases of historical records described in the present disclosure, and storage of decision rules of the supervised models in the present disclosure.

The bus subsystem 2004 may provide a mechanism for enabling the various components and subsystems of computing device 2000 to communicate with each other as intended. Although the bus subsystem 2004 is shown schematically as a single bus, alternative embodiments of the bus subsystem may utilize multiple busses. The network interface subsystem 2016 may provide an interface to other computing devices and networks. The network interface subsystem 2016 may serve as an interface for receiving data from, and transmitting data to, other systems from the computing device 2000. For example, the network interface subsystem 2016 may enable a data technician to connect the device to a wireless network such that the data technician may be able to transmit and receive data while in a remote location, such as a user data center. The bus subsystem 2004 may be utilized for communicating data, such as details, search terms, and so on to the supervised model of the present disclosure, and may be utilized for communicating the output of the supervised model to the one or more processors 2002 and to merchants and/or creditors via the network interface subsystem 2016.

The user interface input devices 2012 may include one or more user input devices, such as a keyboard, pointing devices such as an integrated mouse, trackball, touchpad, or graphics tablet, a scanner, a barcode scanner, a touch screen incorporated into the display, audio input devices such as voice recognition systems, microphones, and other types of input devices. In general, use of the term “input device” is intended to include all possible types of devices and mechanisms for inputting information to the computing device 2000. User interface output devices 2014 may include a display subsystem, a printer, or non-visual displays such as audio output devices, etc. The display subsystem may be a cathode ray tube (CRT), a flat-panel device such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), light emitting diode (LED) display, or a projection or other display device. In general, use of the term “output device” is intended to include all possible types of devices and mechanisms for outputting information from the computing device 2000. The user interface output device(s) 2014 may be used, for example, to present user interfaces to facilitate user interaction with applications performing processes described herein and variations therein, when such interaction may be appropriate.

The storage subsystem 2006 may provide a computer-readable storage medium for storing the basic programming and data constructs that may provide the functionality of at least one embodiment of the present disclosure. The applications (programs, code modules, instructions) that, when executed by one or more processors, may provide the functionality of one or more embodiments of the present disclosure, and may be stored in the storage subsystem 2006. These application modules or instructions may be executed by the one or more processors 2002. The storage subsystem 2006 may additionally provide a repository for storing data used in accordance with the present disclosure. The storage subsystem 2006 may comprise a memory subsystem 2008 and a file/disk storage subsystem 2010.

The memory subsystem 2008 may include a number of memories including a main random access memory (RAM) 2018 for storage of instructions and data during program execution and a read only memory (ROM) 2020 in which fixed instructions may be stored. The file/disk storage subsystem 2010 may provide a non-transitory persistent (non-volatile) storage for program and data files, and may include a hard disk drive, a floppy disk drive along with associated removable media, a Compact Disk Read Only Memory (CD-ROM) drive, an optical drive, removable media cartridges, and other like storage media.

The computing device 2000 may include at least one local clock 2024. The local clock 2024 may be a counter that represents the number of ticks that have transpired from a particular starting date and may be located integrally within the computing device 2000. The local clock 2024 may be used to synchronize data transfers in the processors for the computing device 2000 and all of the subsystems included therein at specific clock pulses and may be used to coordinate synchronous operations between the computing device 2000 and other systems in a data center. In one embodiment the local clock 2024 is an atomic clock. In another embodiment, the local clock is a programmable interval timer.

The computing device 2000 may be of various types including a portable computer device, tablet computer, a workstation, or any other device described below. Additionally, the computing device 2000 may include another device that may be connected to the computing device 2000 through one or more ports (e.g., USB, a headphone jack, Lightning connector, etc.). The device that may be connected to the computing device 2000 may include a plurality of ports configured to accept fiber-optic connectors. Accordingly, this device may be configured to convert optical signals to electrical signals that may be transmitted through the port connecting the device to the computing device 2000 for processing. Due to the ever-changing nature of computers and networks, the description of the computing device 2000 depicted in FIG. 20 is intended only as a specific example for purposes of illustrating the preferred embodiment of the device. Many other configurations having more or fewer components than the system depicted in FIG. 20 are possible.

The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made thereunto without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the claims.

Other variations are within the spirit of the present disclosure. Thus, while the disclosed techniques are susceptible to various modifications and alternative constructions, certain illustrated embodiments thereof are shown in the drawings and have been described above in detail. It should be understood, however, that there is no intention to limit the invention to the specific form or forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, alternative constructions and equivalents falling within the spirit and scope of the invention, as defined in the appended claims.

The use of the terms “a” and “an” and “the” and similar referents in the context of describing the disclosed embodiments (especially in the context of the following claims) are to be construed to cover both the singular and the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. The terms “comprising,” “having,” “including” and “containing” are to be construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning “including, but not limited to,”) unless otherwise noted. The term “connected,” when unmodified and referring to physical connections, is to be construed as partly or wholly contained within, attached to or joined together, even if there is something intervening. Recitation of ranges of values herein are merely intended to serve as a shorthand method of referring individually to each separate value falling within the range, unless otherwise indicated herein and each separate value is incorporated into the specification as if it were individually recited herein. The use of the term “set” (e.g., “a set of items”) or “subset” unless otherwise noted or contradicted by context, is to be construed as a nonempty collection comprising one or more members. Further, unless otherwise noted or contradicted by context, the term “subset” of a corresponding set does not necessarily denote a proper subset of the corresponding set, but the subset and the corresponding set may be equal.

Conjunctive language, such as phrases of the form “at least one of A, B, and C,” or “at least one of A, B and C,” unless specifically stated otherwise or otherwise clearly contradicted by context, is otherwise understood with the context as used in general to present that an item, term, etc., may be either A or B or C, or any nonempty subset of the set of A and B and C. For instance, in the illustrative example of a set having three members, the conjunctive phrases “at least one of A, B, and C” and “at least one of A, B and C” refer to any of the following sets: {A}, {B}, {C}, {A, B}, {A, C}, {B, C}, {A, B, C}. Thus, such conjunctive language is not generally intended to imply that certain embodiments require at least one of A, at least one of B and at least one of C each to be present.

Operations of processes described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. Processes described herein (or variations and/or combinations thereof) may be performed under the control of one or more computer systems configured with executable instructions and may be implemented as code (e.g., executable instructions, one or more computer programs or one or more applications) executing collectively on one or more processors, by hardware or combinations thereof. The code may be stored on a computer-readable storage medium, for example, in the form of a computer program comprising a plurality of instructions executable by one or more processors.

The computer-readable storage medium may be non-transitory.

The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., “such as”) provided herein, is intended merely to better illuminate embodiments of the invention and does not pose a limitation on the scope of the invention unless otherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to the practice of the invention.

Embodiments of this disclosure are described herein, including the best mode known to the inventors for carrying out the invention. Variations of those embodiments may become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading the foregoing description. The inventors expect skilled artisans to employ such variations as appropriate and the inventors intend for embodiments of the present disclosure to be practiced otherwise than as specifically described herein. Accordingly, the scope of the present disclosure includes all modifications and equivalents of the subject matter recited in the claims appended hereto as permitted by applicable law. Moreover, any combination of the above-described elements in all possible variations thereof is encompassed by the scope of the present disclosure unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context.

All references, including publications, patent applications, and patents, cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each reference were individually and specifically indicated to be incorporated by reference and were set forth in its entirety herein. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: obtaining a first set of records from persistent storage at a first storage location; obtaining, from a second storage location, a second set of records different from the first set of records; computing, based at least in part on the second set of records, a confidence score that indicates an amount confidence that the first set of records and the second set of records correspond to a same individual; as a result of the confidence score exceeding a threshold, causing a client device of an individual associated with the second set of records to prompt the individual to confirm control of a first asset identified by first data within the first set of records, the first data being absent from the second set of records; sending, in response to receiving a confirmation from the client device, a message to a destination associated with the first asset; obtaining a response to the message indicating that the first asset is controlled by the individual; storing an association between the first set of records and a second asset identified by second data within the second set of records; and updating an interface of the client device to cause the client device to display details about the first set of records and the second set of records.
 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein storing the association includes associating the first asset with the second set of records.
 3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the first set of records was recorded prior to the second set of records.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the first asset is associated with an address that indicates the destination to which communications can be transmitted.
 5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein: sending the message to the destination includes transmitting the message to the destination via the address; and the response indicates that the first asset is controlled by the individual by indicating that the message was received at the destination.
 6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein updating the interface further includes updating the interface to display details about the second set of records simultaneously with details about the first set of records.
 7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, wherein storing the association further includes updating a database containing the first set of records to indicate that the first set of records is associated with the second asset.
 8. A system, comprising: one or more processors; and memory including executable instructions that, if executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to: obtain a first set of records from persistent storage; obtain a second set of records different from the first set of records; compute, based at least in part on the second set of records and the first set of records, a score that indicates an amount of confidence that the first set of records and the second set of records correspond to a same individual; cause, as a result of the score reaching a value relative to a threshold, a device of an individual associated with the second set of records to prompt the individual to confirm control of a first asset identified by first data within the first set of records, the first data being absent from the second set of records; provide, in response to receiving a confirmation from the device, a message to a destination associated with the first asset; confirm, as a result of a response to the message indicating that the first asset is controlled by the individual, that the individual is the same individual; store an association between the second set of records and the first asset; and cause the client device to display details about both the first set of records and the second set of records.
 9. The system of claim 8, wherein the executable instructions that cause the cause the system to send the message to the destination further include instructions that further cause the system to transmit the message via an address specified in the first data.
 10. The system of claim 8, wherein the first asset is one of a computing device or an account.
 11. The system of claim 8, wherein the executable instructions that cause the system to compute the confidence score further include instructions that further cause the system to: provide, as input to a plurality of decision trees, details associated with the second set of records and the first set of records; and receive, as output from the plurality of decision trees, the confidence score in response.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein: the plurality of decision trees comprise a random forest; and the output is a result of votes by the plurality of decision trees of the random forest.
 13. The system of claim 12, wherein the executable instructions further include instructions that further cause the system to, further as the result of the response indicating that the first asset is controlled by the individual, store the first set of records with a set of historical records usable to train the random forest.
 14. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon executable instructions that, as a result of being executed by one or more processors of a computer system, cause the computer system to at least: obtain a first set of records from persistent storage at a first storage location; obtain, from a second storage location, a second set of records different from the first set of records; compute, based at least in part on the second set of records and the first set of records, a confidence score that indicates an amount of confidence that the first set of records correspond to a same individual as the second set of records; as a result of the confidence score exceeding a threshold, cause an interface of a client device of an individual associated with the second set of records to prompt the individual to confirm control of a first asset identified by first data within the first set of records, the first data being absent from the second set of records; transmit, in response to receiving a confirmation from the client device, a message to a destination address associated with the first asset; and as a result of a determination that a response to the message transmitted indicates that the first asset is controlled by the same individual that controls a second asset identified by second data within the second set of records: associate, in a data store, the first set of records with the second asset; and update the interface to cause the client device to concurrently display details about the first set of records and the second set of records.
 15. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein: the message includes a confirmation code; and the executable instructions further include instructions that further cause the computer system to determine, based at least in part on the response including a match to the confirmation code, that the response received indicates that the first asset is controlled by the individual.
 16. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein: the second set of records indicates that a second asset is associated with both a first individual and a second individual; and the executable instructions further include instructions that cause the computer system to cause an interface to prompt the individual to provide information usable to determine which of the first individual or the second individual is the individual.
 17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the executable instructions further include instructions that further cause computer system to as a result of a determination that the response received fails to indicate that the first asset is controlled by the same individual, disassociate the first set of records from the second set of records.
 18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 17, wherein the executable instructions that cause the computer system to compute the confidence score further include instructions that further cause the computer system to: provide details of the second set of records and the first set of records as input to a random forest having a ground truth value corresponding to a user identity; and receive, as output from the random forest, the confidence score in response.
 19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 18, wherein the executable instructions further include instructions that further cause the computer system to retrain the random forest from a set of historical records that includes the second set of records.
 20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, wherein the executable instructions that cause the computer system to retrain the random forest further include instructions that further cause the computer system to, further as the result of the determination that the response received fails to indicate that the first asset is controlled by the same individual, retrain the random forest from the set of historical records disregarding the first set of records. 